Gail Collins

Gay rights is just a matter of time. Look at the polls. Worrying about gay marriage, let alone gay civil unions or gay employment rights, is a middle-age issue. Young people just can't see the problem. At worst, gays are going to win this one just by waiting until the opposition dies off. ”

The middle of 'America's Women' is about the Civil War, and how women, black and white, confronted slavery and abolition. As in every other period of crisis, the rules of sexual decorum were suspended due to emergency. ”

You know what Americans are really sensitive to? Issues of fairness. I think this is a modern phenomenon, born of the civil rights movement. Once you convince Americans that something is basically unfair, you've got a winning cause. ”

Back in the '70s when my friends in California were at Berkeley, in-state tuition was around $700 a year. ”

The Bushes were certainly part of Texas in their mind, but they didn't have the kind of political flavor that you normally find in Texas politicians. It's just Texas is such a unique place to itself that politically, at least so far, they haven't found anybody to play nationally. ”

Elections have to have at least a little meaning. Obama ran on income tax hikes for the wealthy. People knew they were voting for that. They 'want' that. And it's good policy. ”

The whole student loan thing drives me completely nuts. If it wasn't possible for 18-year-olds to sign themselves up for tens of thousands of dollars in debt in order to pay their college bills, the state governments wouldn't have found it so politically easy to cut taxpayer support for public colleges and universities. ”

I am prepared to admit that when it comes to dealing with the House and Senate leaders, Obama is terrible. But he's great with the public. Which hates the House and Senate as much as he does. ”

What naturally you want to do if you were a prominent person in the public light and you are disgraced, you want to make a comeback, and normally that begins with somebody saying, 'I want to do something to help people. I want to do something to help the lepers in the Third World. I want to do something to help abandoned wives in India.' ”

Sarah Palin is treated like a bimbo sometimes, but she has never given the public the respect they deserve. She acts silly and doesn't know stuff. She didn't even finish her term. ”