Graydon Carter

“New York has arguably become the quintessential 1 percent city, a city that has been so given over to the rich that you now have to be rich to live here. Or not live here: New York's also a preferred destination for foreign money spent on vast, lifeless apartments in the sky that are occupied a couple of weeks a year at most.”

“Americans who grew up in the 1930s or 1940s still have some fleeting memory of what the country was like before it became the steroidal superpower it is today.”

“I think the movie business is in trouble. It's all movies that you've seen before. Everything's a remake; they want things that are familiar rather than things that surprise you.”

“Every minute you invest in kids you get back four times over.”

“I think being Canadian helps you as a journalist in America, because you're sort of on the outside watching this big party going on, and you're sort of taking mental notes as it goes on. I think if you're in the party the whole time, you don't notice it as much. And I think Canadians are very good observers of American culture.”

“Magazine stories, the best ones anyway, are generally a combination of three elements: access, narrative, and disclosure.”

“It could fairly be said that America, during the Bush years, has entered an Age of Denial - arguably the first stage of a nation's decline.”

“Let's face it, who among us wouldn't take a pill or potion that would make us better at our job? Goodness knows, we abuse substances for just about everything in our personal lives; why not in our professional lives as well?”

“You have to give kids something to rebel against. You can't like their music - you have to call it noise. It's incumbent on a parent.”

“I actually don't know how magazines are produced, I'll be honest with you. I have no idea.”

“As any journalist will tell you, there are few professional situations as vexing as when a friend becomes involved in a major story that you feel you must cover.”

“Cod is more responsible for the discovery of the New World than almost anything else. Drove the Vikings across the North Atlantic, and John Cabot discovered America by looking for cod.”

“The greatest thing that prepared me for editing 'Vanity Fair' was having four kids because you just learn to subjugate your ego with the greater interest in mind.”

“In the Digital Age, recorders also tend to be oversharers, and with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest, they can do so on a grand scale.”

“There's probably a half-dozen movie actors I really like. But a lot of them just aren't that interesting.”

“We admire elephants in part because they demonstrate what we consider the finest human traits: empathy, self-awareness, and social intelligence. But the way we treat them puts on display the very worst of human behavior.”

“Many men think they're playboys, but they invariably land wide of the mark. Surrounding yourself with champagne, fast friends, and paid escorts is the very definition of the word 'loser.'”

“Take a random selection of photographs of America in 2012 and 2002 and 1992 and, except for the skinny jeans and the porkpie hats, you'll be hard-pressed to tell the years in which the pictures were taken.”

“You lose manufacturing jobs, you rarely ever get them back again.”

“In less than a year, the Bush administration will strut out of office, leaving the country in roughly the same condition a toddler leaves a diaper.”