Ron Suskind

“When a precious secret is collected It tends to glow in the darkness. Placed in daylight, fitted along a wide landscape of fact, it often loses its brilliance.”

“If you write something the White House doesn't like, they take you in and say, 'If you ever write something like you did today, nobody from the White House will ever talk to you again,'”

“You can actually herd cats. They can't be forced, of course. But if they sense something they want, if there enticed by something good, they'll follow, even in herds.”

“Necessity and desperation birth resourcefulness.”

“Al-Qaeda has a kind of loose, almost entrepreneurial structure with lots of cells in various countries that are semi-independent.”

“One world leader warned another "the error of relying on the capability you have rather than developing the capability you need.”

“I'm more depressed about the realities of the mature bureaucracy and more excited about the ideal that we're fighting for. And the juxtaposition has obvious consequences. Rolf Mowatt-Larrsen”

“All of the leading terrorism experts are clear on one thing: that in terms of protecting America, we are almost never going to know a place or a time of an attack.”

“Nonetheless, the fact remains; he had hope in a better world he could not yet see that overwhelmed the cries of "you can't" or "you won't" or "why bother." More than anything else, mastering that faith, on cue, is what separated him from his peers, and distinguishes him from so many people in these literal, sophisticated times. It has made all the difference.”

“Life-shaping institutions tend to start with an idea or revelation. They often become mostly about the preservation and expansion of authority, something they relinquish only with the greatest reluctance.”

“The substance of faith is a hope in the unseen.”

“He was rebuilt, reconstituted by vengeance dressed up as high purpose.”

“The problems afflicting a nation are always in equal measure spiritual crises.”

“By virtue of some of the ways the game is played, in terms of message discipline, in terms of access for reporters, and especially in the way that sources and subjects, especially famous subjects, treat the media, almost by default there's more news that's falling into books.”

“Public servants in this Europe often do their best when they stop caring about whether they'll be fired.”

“Message matters. Message matters almost as much as actions.”

“I absolutely reject that idea that the press is liberal and what it does is liberal. In my view, it's like accusing a doctor of malpractice or a lawyer of malfeasance.”

“The media has become more forceful, has begun to recognize its traditional historic role and act on it, and truth is infectious.”

“The fact is, most journalists I know are not particularly political. They move around a lot.”

“If the opposite of certainty is doubt, humility must lie somewhere between the two,”