Gail Collins

“The history of American women is about the fight for freedom, but it's less a war against oppressive men than a struggle to straighten out the perpetually mixed message about women's role that was accepted by almost everybody of both genders.”

“There's always been that theory that if a candidate can't run a decent campaign, he probably can't run a decent presidency. That might be true, although sadly I must admit that running a brilliant campaign does not translate into running a brilliant White House.”

“My only thought about Margaret Thatcher is the same one I had about Ronald Reagan. I hated a lot of what they did, but once in a while a country just needs a change.”

“For years I've been hearing 20-somethings say they don't expect Social Security to be around when they hit 65. Eventually, I came to realize that they really mean that they just don't expect to be 65. Or 40. Neither did I, when I was 22.”

“Natural Texas politicians make terrible, terrible presidential candidates. Phil Gramm, I remember the 'Phil Gramm for President' campaign. I thought that was the worst thing in the history of the world, but Rick Perry was possibly worse.”

“There are a lot of people in Congress who would never have made a great career or fortune in any other profession. But after they spend a while hanging out with the rich guys, they begin to feel they've been undervalued, and that an eventual seven-figure income as a lobbyist isn't just an opportunity, it's their due.”

“I used to like John McCain, too, but I must admit that was because he was bucking his party to do things I agreed with. I would not have had that reaction if, say, Bernie Sanders decided to rebel out of principle and support privatizing Social Security.”

“Hillary Clinton almost got to be president. The reasons why she didn't become president had to do with bad judgments about how to handle the early caucus states, which is not a gender-specific trait.”

“You know, I have a lot of books on my iPad, but when I try to read them, I find myself wandering off to play games. Those are books I'm interested in. I can't imagine what would have happened to me in college if my biology class had been on the same computer as 'Words With Friends' and 'Doom.'”

“The IRS targeting certain groups for harassment because of their politics would be unfair. If we found out the NSA was keeping special tabs on everyone who worshiped at a mosque or took a Bible trip through the Middle East, you'd have an uprising.”

“When the women's movement began, it was a middle-class phenomenon. Certainly, black women had other stuff to think about in the '60s besides a women's movement. Working-class women were slow to get into it.”

“The high point was that the people are really nice - despite the crazy politics - and I loved being there. The hardest part was knowing some of the things I was probably going to write about Texas would make those nice people very unhappy.”

“You know what Americans are really sensitive to? Issues of fairness. I think this is a modern phenomenon, born of the civil rights movement. Once you convince Americans that something is basically unfair, you've got a winning cause.”

“One very clear memory I have of college is that I never learned anything in the big lectures. I have a feeling I'd have done even worse if they'd been on a laptop screen.”

“For the undocumented immigrants, the big priority is just to get out from the shadows, be able to get a driver's license, buy an airplane ticket and stop worrying about sudden deportation. But for the country as a whole, it's crucial that everybody have a citizen's stake in the nation's welfare.”

“Now my poor hometown is being castigated as the center of an IRS scandal. Humble workers at the Cincinnati office targeted Tea Party groups and other conservative organizations for special scrutiny when those groups applied for tax-exempt status. There's no conceivable excuse for that. It was deeply, deeply wrong.”

“In the 1960s, you had this booming economy, and you didn't really have enough men around to fill all the jobs. So there was this sudden demand that women come back and perform a lot of the white-collar and pink-collar roles that men had done before or that hadn't existed before.”

“Texas has no income tax, which is a big draw for corporate executives who do business there. But it's hardly tax-free. The property taxes are high for a Southern state. The sales taxes are high. One study found that the bottom 20 percent of the Texas population pays 12 percent of its income in state and local taxes.”

“The whole student loan thing drives me completely nuts. If it wasn't possible for 18-year-olds to sign themselves up for tens of thousands of dollars in debt in order to pay their college bills, the state governments wouldn't have found it so politically easy to cut taxpayer support for public colleges and universities.”

“I picked up my college copy of 'The Great Gatsby' in an attempt to recover from the movie and was interested to find out what I'd underlined. The answer was basically: everything.”