Jonathan Raban Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“The only book by a modern president that bears serious comparison with Obama's 'Dreams From My Father' is Jimmy Carter's short campaign autobiography, 'Why Not the Best?,' published in 1975.”

“Inaugurals conventionally start with a history lesson and finish with a prayer.”

“Democrats inhabit the low shores of Puget Sound, mostly on its eastern side, in a ragged trail of port-cities that stretches from Bellingham, close to the Canadian border, through Everett, Seattle, and Tacoma, to Olympia, the state capital, at the southern end of the sound.”

“The trouble with ghostwriting is that it raises the issue of whether the president is in a state of diminished responsibility for what he says. Does he actually grasp the implications of the words he speaks?”

“Lincoln, steeped in the Bible and Shakespeare, set an impossibly high bar for presidential prose.”