Tina Brown
The number one way of becoming powerful in Washington is by becoming the 'Washington Post.'
I wish my daughter wasn't spending time thinking of Kim Kardashian or Rihanna.
Whether it's in Washington, or whether it's with the mothers of extremists, or whether it's education in places like Pakistan... a lot of women in these emerging countries are taking charge and doing amazing things.
American newspapers are dying mostly because they were so dull for so long, a whole generation gave up on them.
It's one of the biggest fibs going that American newspapers are now being forced to give up their commitment to investigative reporting. Most of them gave up long ago as their greedy managements squeezed every cent out of the bottom line and turned their newsrooms into eunuchs.
Reputation is a timely subject, now that nobody has one.
A trio of reputations lie at the heart of Henry James's 'The Portrait of a Lady.'
Until 1869, when they were banned, debtors' prisons were the great incinerators of British reputations. Those who were unable to pay their bills were jailed until their creditors were paid - an unlikely event, given that the prisoner was unable to work.
Anyone aspiring to literary greatness should read 'New Grub Street' and weep.
I think that big, sort of theatrical relaunches tend to set you up for failure and hype.
Any great, long career has at least one flameout in it.
You can get an interview with anyone overseas on the basis of being part of 'Newsweek.' It still has a great deal of impact.
I think British journalists do well in America because the newspaper culture there is so strong - telling stories and presenting them readably is in their DNA. British newspapers get a terrible rap, but they are brilliant in their presentation, most of them, so full of vitality and literary wit.
I've always been very enamored of European newsmagazines - the 'Spiegel' kind of magazine, which has an energetic, high-low approach to news.
When I took over 'The New Yorker,' there was a very, very good, smart staff in place.
I keep thinking about how terrifyingly vulnerable women are in so many countries.
One of the the great things about having had something that didn't work out is: So what? I am fine.
In the world of screens, we're all tired of screens. That's why I think that live events have become so popular.
If a star football player can have a mythical girlfriend, why can't I have a mythical Congress?
It is ironic that American women now need to be fortified by the inspiration of the women of the Arab Spring, who risked so much to win basic human rights.
No one I know has a job anymore. They've got gigs.
Feminism in some ways has become quite dormant.
Almost every media organization is doing something with live events now, and that's because they feel they can break through that way.
In all the debate about Afghanistan, we don't hear much about our obligation to the wretched lives of Afghan women. They are being treated as collateral damage as the big boys discuss geopolitical goals.
The women of Afghanistan, left behind as their men fought, did what the women of World War II did - used their wits and resourcefulness to preserve some semblance of civilization.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was fortunate: He didn't take office until nearly four years after the Wall Street crash, by which time the Republicans' responsibility for the Depression was taken for granted.
It's Obama's bad luck that he got elected just as the mayhem of the foreclosures, the banking collapse, and the General Motors disaster was accelerating the surge in unemployment to warp speed.
Glenn Beck is Rush redux - Limbaugh with liposuction, partying like it's still 1993.
After so much reality TV and confessional celebrity interviews, the public is tired of accessible stars. Who needs them to be 'Just Like Us?' 'Just Like Us' means just as boring as we are.
It's so thrilling to be intimidated.
Obama has figured out the best method to prepare the way for his verbal Houdini acts: Use political noise as the tune-up din before the aria. Perhaps his body temperature is so low, it sometimes takes him too long to break out the song.
When Obama dispenses with that dread sobriquet 'professorial,' he does it by being, well, more professorial.
Obama's great asset has always been an ability to maintain his air of authority without being baritone about it. He can be boring, but he is never ridiculous or pompous.
Perhaps Obama is often slow to nail controversies because he needs time to live inside them for a while in his head. It's unnerving for the rest of us, but even the haters, one feels, are made to think more deeply than they'd like before they return to the bickering and the games.
What does it take to be a great social chronicler? Perhaps one of the key attributes is an understanding of what it feels like to fall from grace.
Plenty of couples snipe at each other in sometimes embarrassing ways in front of company.
Perhaps it's time to stop analyzing Sarah Palin as a politician. Maybe, in her own muddled way, she is at last owning up to the fact that she has been miscast. You don't need politics anymore once you've discovered that the alchemy of celebrity has turned you into a 24-carat phenomenon.
The hazard of confessional books is how fast the world moves on while they're written.
Captain Richard Phillips of the good ship Maersk Alabama - and Sully Sullenberger splashing down his crippled airliner in the Hudson River - broke through the poisonous smog of economic depression and Wall Street skullduggery with a reminder that pure individual heroism is a daily occurrence if we know where to look for it.
Oprah's stock in trade has always been her powerful unmediated connection. She could feel your pain and empower you to talk about it.
It's interesting how the view from abroad can shift and remake perceptions of homegrown celebrities, the ones who are part of the gross domestic product.
The most frequent thing people said to me about Princess Diana when I was conducting interviews for my biography was that she could create a circle of intimacy in the middle of a crowd.
The vaults of Buckingham palace are groaning with priceless, useless freebies from foreign dignitaries.
Unlike his predecessors, Obama is not big on 'Masterpiece Theatre' nostalgia.
The question for Obama is how he can rein in the furies of populism while making us all feel the malefactors of great wealth are being sufficiently punished.
For a guy who believes in hope, Obama doesn't seem to be able to spread much of it around. How can he? We know too much now about the hollowness of institutions and the frailty of their leaders.
Even as the whole world tries to hang on to its job, there is also this weird parallel sense - almost a covert longing - that the old corrupt structures on which that job depends needs to be, ought to be, swept away.
Clinton passed his first budget without a single Republican vote in either the House or the Senate. Before it led to the longest economic expansion in U.S. history, it led to a Democratic defeat in the 1994 midterms.
Washington's Alfalfa Club dinner is a populist's nightmare.