"Lester ennobled the ludicrous inner life of pop fans by telling the truth about it — by discerning that inner lives, and not music, were what pop music was about"

“The President is absolutely, totally convinced in his mind that that isn’t what happened. I know him, I know what his feeling is on this. I have heard what he said, and I accept it.”

The distinctively modern aspect of Nixon is that he can’t help betraying an awareness of the artifice in himself

“In Rosa Luxemburg, the line between emotion and intelligence re­mained strong and direct. All her life it was the task of her intellect to explain what her gut told her was true.”