Unparalleled Insight Quotes

For those of us who spent our careers competing with David Broder, the hardest thing to abide was the inevitable comparison. If someone said Jack Germond - or Jules Witcover or Walter Mears or whoever - 'is a pretty good political reporter,' the default response would be, 'but he's no David Broder.'

The great thing about James Baldwin and his writing is that it's still fresh every time you pick it up. That's also the sad thing about his writing sometimes, too.

Genius is a promontory jutting out into the infinite.

David Milch is one of the smartest human beings I've ever met. I'm relatively bright and relatively well-read. I'm not in a league with that guy.

Don't forget - no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.

Our understanding, great as it sometimes seems, can be nothing but the wide-eyed wonder of the child when measured against omniscience.

Genius: the superhuman in man.

People sometimes think I'm sort of all-knowing.

No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.

One posthumous measure of a person's life is how often you imagine his impossible return to deal with some event he never lived to encounter. You picture his reactions, his advice, his sage commentary and humorous asides. For instance, I think about Mark Twain's hypothetical take on current events several times a week.