David Frum

“Events don't happen because I write a speech. I am allowed to write a speech because events are going to happen.”

“A presidential speech is always the work of many hands.”

“I am really and truly frightened by the collapse of support for the Republican Party by the young and the educated.”

“Look, the media are trapped by changes in the technology and business of their industry.”

“My view on candidates on money is unless it's proven that the donor stole the money, the campaign keeps the money.”

“People need to understand that in Washington, the process is the punishment.”

“As thrilling as it was, speechwriting is ultimately frustrating for someone who wants to be a writer.”

“Maybe it's true that people with less extreme views who are also interested in public affairs have been driven out by a marketplace that doesn't offer them anything of the tone they want to listen to.”

“We, as conservative intellectuals, should not be in the business of making excuses for bad parliamentary decisions by Republican leaders in Congress.”

“My mother cared more about how you reasoned than about the conclusions you reached.”

“There are a lot of wonderful people in America who shouldn't be on the Supreme Court - and a lot who should be on the court who aren't such wonderful people.”

“The elite isn't leading anymore. It's trapped.”

“The big winners under the American fiscal system are the rich, who pay some of the lowest taxes anywhere in the world; the old, who are the main beneficiaries of the American social service state; farmers, rural people. These are Republican constituencies.”

“A novel makes it possible to understand not just events, but the people who control the events; not only their choices, but also their motives.”

“America under 30 is a more non-whites place than America over 60. And we know that non-whites and whites vote differently.”

“Nobody ever won an election by spitting at his political opponents.”

“My mom was truly an iconic figure, a great journalist and a pioneering woman who died at 54 of cancer without ever having revealed to viewers that she was ill.”

“Speech writers are more vulnerable to vanity than any other group of people in Washington.”

“A generation ago, or two, when there were three channels, plus PBS, and when you needed - when you needed 15 million people to make a living, the media could focus on the broad country. And most people had no choice about getting political information. It was there at 6:30 whether you wanted it or not.”

“I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words.”