SALLY QUINN

Every poll shows that most journalists are Democrats.

This morning in the Washington Post there was a statistic about how 85% of Americans are Christians.

Most of the people who live in Washington come from other places and you can learn something from them.

I think, certainly in the more civilized societies, women's roles are growing in power all of the time.

Last week I did a piece for Style on advice to Laura Bush about how to help her husband. This week it's religion. It just depends on what I find interesting at the moment.

We're newspaper junkies; I can't imagine life without a newspaper.

The first term of the Clinton administration was very jolly. Everybody was running around meeting people and of course, in the second term, everyone went down the black hole, which also happened at the end of the Reagan administration.

I had cottage cheese for lunch and a glass of wine when I got home tonight.

The football season is like pain. You forget how terrible it is until it seizes you again.

I was brought up by an Episcopalian father and Presbyterian mother in nondenominational Army chapels all over the world and never really had much religious experience.

Often what we do is open our house for various charity events. I don't seat according to protocol. I don't invite people because of who they are in the administration or their positions of power. The few who do come, are there because I like them.

Funny you mention my dinner parties when I have just suggested that inviting close friends over to share a meal with candlelight and wine at your table could be a form of religious experience for some people. To me it's a form of sacrament.

It is only in the fundamentalist religions that women are relegated to second class. Radical Evangelicals, Muslims, and Jews all have the same view of women.

We've been together 32 years and married for 27.

It's always in the second administration when things start to go sour. They circle the wagons.

Even Colin Powell who was everywhere before he became secretary of state, just stopped going out. I think part of it was he didn't want to be viewed suspiciously by the other people in the White House who rarely go anywhere.

I first came on the scene during the Johnson years and that crowd was out all the time enjoying themselves. Nixon wasn't particularly social but a lot of the people in his administration were.

I never know what I'm going to do for the Post next. Two weeks ago I had a piece on Homeland Security. This is one of my pig ongoing projects. How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

Then my mother had several strokes and my father, who was 85, couldn't handle it, so Donna came back and we went through the same thing here. She lives in Mill Valley; her group is organizing this event.

I just had a thought that perhaps religion is so vibrant here is because of the melting pot aspect to our society. WE have so many cultures here in the US and they all bring something new to their religious experiences.

I think that obviously humans find it very difficult to believe that there is no there there. So they created these stories and myths to give their lives some meaning.

How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.

Religion is something that you need to do in silence.

Everyone gets meaning in different ways.

So many of the problems we have today are because people don't respect the beliefs of others.