I don't want to force my politics on my readers.

I will go to the next election saying to Australians vote for me vote for the Liberal Party and I will become your PM. So I'm offering myself as the alternative PM - that's one way people describe the Leader of the Opposition - but I'm not in politics for myself to realize a personal ambition.

The only reason to be in politics is public service. There's no other reason. Frankly if that's the best job you can get in terms of money that's too bad you know. Because frankly it's not well paid everyone knows that. So for most people it's a big sacrifice.

It is our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them and have the honesty to say to people 'There are no easy solutions here.'

The proliferation of outlets that digital technology has enabled has itself contributed to the changing nature of what we regard as 'news' and the way in which many citizens perceive politics.

Broadcasters or politicians or writers who think that they are respecting Struggle Street the battlers by dumbing things down into one-line sound bites are not respecting them they are treating them with contempt. It's our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them.

This is not the time for partisan bickering. This is not the time for politics as usual. Some of us are Democrats. Some of us are Republicans. Some of us are Independents. Above all we must be Oklahomans first.

Gossip is easy politics is hard.

Does politics have to be injected into everything?

American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free.

Men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married.

In my case I was covering politics in Texas as a newspaper man in the 1960's.

The tax issue is the most powerful issue in American politics going back to the Tea Party. People say 'Oh Grover Norquist has power.' No. Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform focus on the tax issue. The tax issue is a powerful issue.

There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues the populists the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the realm in politics.

I am interested in politics.

I'm not taking any interest in politics. I'm not involved in politics in any way. My life is in writing now.

I'm not involved in politics any more and they're quite right.

The essential ingredient of politics is timing.

I hate politics hate deals and deal-making hate meeting with attorneys and agents.

I became active in politics because I saw the possibility if we all sat back and did nothing of a world in which there would no longer be any stages for actors to act on.

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting but they have something missing in their natures there is a hole an empty place and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

I've always said that in politics your enemies can't hurt you but your friends will kill you.

Short of being prime minister there isn't a better job in British politics than running London.