Christopher Buckley

I was an only child with a lot of time to kill. I suspect a lot of writers are only children, or only children become writers because it's a way of being alone.

President Obama came to office proclaiming that he aims to solve problems, not hand them on to our children. Most presidents say that sort of thing.

I was an only child who had every advantage, every blessing, absolutely.

I don't think I ever once heard Mum utter a religious or spiritual sentiment, a considerable feat considering that she was married for 57 years to one of the most prominent Catholics in the country.

How many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to mix the martinis, one to change the light bulb, and one to reminisce about how good the old one was.

My wife and I spent the winter in Worcestershire. This allowed me to tell everyone back home in the States, 'We are wintering in Worcestershire.' This may be a sentence that has never actually been uttered in human history, even by people who spend all their winters in Worcestershire.

Joe Scarborough was one of 74 Republicans elected to the Congress in 1994 in response to the missteps of the early Clinton era. He was the first Republican elected to Congress from his northern Florida district since the 1870s and handily won re-election three times.

I live on a train. I know - what a sad thing to admit. I am the New-Age Willy Loman. But there it is.

I worked at the White House in the early Reagan administration at a time when the deficit rocket really started to take off.

Short of taking monastic vows or trekking into the Kalahari, a freighter passage might just offer what our relentlessly connected age has made difficult, if not impossible: splendid isolation.

Not much ever really comes of commissions, really. The last one that really came up with something truly concrete was the Warren Commission, and for all its good work, most Americans persist in believing that Oswald was working in tandem with the CIA, FBI, Lyndon Johnson, and the John Birch Society.