Christopher Buckley

I am not a political thinker. I'm not even much of a thinker. I'm a hack novelist. ”

We make our public servants jump through quite a few hoops, you know. We get hysterical if they accept a $50 lunch from a lobbyist. We get hysterical if they accept a ride on some corporate jet. ”

I remember dawn coming up over the Strait of Malacca; ragamuffin kids on the dock in Sumatra laughing as they pelted us with bananas; collecting dead flying fish off the deck and bringing them to our sweet, fat, toothless Danish cook to fry up for breakfast. ”

Catch-22's admirers cross boundaries - ideological, generational, geographical. ”

If you're a speech writer for a president, you don't really see all that much of him because there's so many layers between you and him. But with a vice president, it's different. ”

Coming to terms with Donald Trump as the Republican nominee is like being told you have Stage 1 or Stage 2 cancer. You know you'll probably survive, but one way or the other, there's going to be a lot of throwing up. ”

I grew up in the GOP sandbox. My dad took me, age 7, to meet Herbert Hoover, in his apartment at the Waldorf Towers. He gave me a silver dollar. Being a young Republican, I spent it on comic books. ”

The Republican Party once could lay claim to the mantle of being the fiscally responsible, or 'Daddy,' Party. ”

Writing's all I know. Frankly, I've never been able to do anything else. ”

At the senior prom for my Catholic boarding school, I was feeling manly, so I shaved, even though I didn't need to. Being inexperienced, I managed to slice a quarter-inch gash into my lower chin a half hour before I picked up my date. ”