George Packer

“I don't know if it's a male thing, but I've always been interested in how people respond to the stresses and dangers of war, how they react under fire.”

“Even while writing about foreign places, I have been in a way writing about America, because that's the subject that interests me the most. I'm attached to it, critical, but it's definitely my country, and maybe even more so when I'm overseas.”

“The best example of Obama's success in foreign policy is Iran.”

“Partly what I'm writing about is the way taboos get toppled.”

“The difference between a reporter, a newspaper columnist, a paid speaker, a television personality, a radio talk show host, a blogger, a movie producer, a publicist, and a political strategist, is growing less - and not more - distinct.”

“A great writer requires a great biography, and a great biography must tell the truth.”

“It's a cliche that the Senate is broken, and like most cliches, it's true.”

“When I interviewed Paul Bremer in his office, he had almost no books on his shelves. He had a couple of management books, like 'Leadership' by Rudolph Giuliani. I didn't take it as an encouraging sign.”

“I need to protect myself from my own addictive impulse.”

“Obama is the splendid fruit of a meritocracy.”

“Politics demands certain skills honed by experience, just as journalism does, just as acting does.”

“I have my sympathies and also my critical views, and they aren't much of a secret, but my first job is to see and hear and think about what I've seen and heard.”

“This isn't to deny that there were fierce arguments, at the time and ever since, about the causes and goals of both the Civil War and the Second World War. But 1861 and 1941 each created a common national narrative (which happened to be the victors' narrative): both wars were about the country's survival and the expansion of the freedoms on which it was founded. Nothing like this consensus has formed around September 11th.... Indeed, the decade since the attacks has destroyed the very possibility of a common national narrative in this country.”

“What I found in Silicon Valley is an industry that's sort of been kept a very far remove from Washington and had an attitude of 'Just let us do our thing and make the miracles that people love around the world and leave us alone.'”

“The slow, mismanaged arrival of armored vehicles and bulletproof plates for flak vests was only the most conspicuous demonstration of how the Iraq War, like every war -- just or unjust, won or lost -- became a conspiracy of the old and powerful against the young and dutiful.”

“On foreign policy, Obama has talked softly and carried a big stick.”

“Pay attention to other people's nightmares because they might be contagious.”

“Trump has seized the Republican nomination by finding scapegoats for the economic hardships and disintegrating lives of working-class whites while giving these voters a reassuring but false promise of their restoration to the center of American life.”

“Ambition, of course, is the politician's currency.”

“The reformocons court right-wing censure simply by acknowledging that the middle class is under pressure and that government has a role to play beyond cutting taxes.”