Molly Ivins

“Some days, I'd feel better with Punxsutawney Phil in the Oval Office - at least he doesn't lie about the weather.”

“The greatest moral leader of my lifetime was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whose private life does not bear close examination.”

“I worked through cancer twice. I probably worked through it too much the last time. This time, I found myself saying, 'Well, I don't feel well. I think I'll take the day off.' I think I did that even a little bit more than I needed to.”

“Sometimes misunderstandings between bloggers and the MSM are the result of simple ignorance.”

“I do object to those who jump from political hackery to flackery and expect respect.”

“Racists seem obsessed by the idea that illegal workers - the hardest-working, poorest people in America - are somehow getting away with something, sneaking goodies that should be for Americans. You can always avoid this problem by having no social services. This is the refreshing Texas model, and it works a treat.”

“Old-fashioned anti-immigrant prejudice always brings out some old-fashioned racists.”

“I saw a shrink because I thought I suffered from fear of success.”

“I'm sorry to say cancer can kill you, but it doesn't make you a better person.”

“Anyone who has ever spent time listening to a legislature knows the astonishing speed at which all presiding officers and reading clerks can spit out the formulaic incantations of parliamentary procedure.”

“Should a girl like me, in whom the milk of human kindness flows copiously for everyone, from protein-shy Hottentots to the glandular obese, actually aim a few swift boots at the prone form of Sen. Phil Gramm? Nah. But it's tempting.”

“The most unusual thing about Clinton as a pol is that he listens. Listens and remembers. If he does dance with them that brung him, not them that gave him big money, we will have a populist on our hands.”

“There is more hooey spread about the Second Amendment. It says quite clearly that guns are for those who form part of a well-regulated militia, i.e., the armed forces including the National Guard. The reasons for keeping them away from everyone else get clearer by the day.”

“One nice thing about the benefit of long experience with la frontera is that we in Texas don't have to run around getting all hysterical about immigrants. The border is porous. When you want cheap labor, you open it up; when you don't, you shut it down. It works to our benefit - it always has.”

“Fourteen-year-old boys are not part of a well-regulated militia. Members of wacky religious cults are not part of a well-regulated militia. Permitting unregulated citizens to have guns is destroying the security of this free state.”

“The trouble with capitalism as a system is that only those who have or can get capital can make it work for them, and that leaves out damn near all of us.”

“I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.”

“Here's the deal on Texas. It's big. So big, there's about five distinct and different places here, separated from one another geologically, topographically, botanically, ethnically, culturally, and climatically.”

“Conservatives, in general, are anti-immigrant for the same reasons they have always been anti-immigrant - a proud tradition in our nation of immigrants going back to the days of the Founders, when Ben Franklin thought we were going to be overrun by Germans. But Business likes illegal workers.”

“I really do think we're going through a period of concentration of ownership of media, and we're starting to see the effects at the editorial level, and it's all bad. This increased pressure for profits every quarter, smaller news hole, less coverage of important stuff - the extent that it's become one giant infotainment industry.”