Sally Quinn Quotes

“It's always in the second administration when things start to go sour. They circle the wagons.”

— Sally Quinn

“The football season is like pain. You forget how terrible it is until it seizes you again.”

— Sally Quinn

“The first term of the Clinton administration was very jolly. Everybody was running around meeting people and of course, in the second term, everyone went down the black hole, which also happened at the end of the Reagan administration.”

— Sally Quinn

“I never know what I'm going to do for the Post next. Two weeks ago I had a piece on Homeland Security. This is one of my pig ongoing projects. How unprepared we are for a terrorist attack.”

— Sally Quinn

“Funny you mention my dinner parties when I have just suggested that inviting close friends over to share a meal with candlelight and wine at your table could be a form of religious experience for some people. To me it's a form of sacrament.”

— Sally Quinn

“I had cottage cheese for lunch and a glass of wine when I got home tonight.”

— Sally Quinn

Then my mother had several strokes and my father, who was 85, couldn't handle it, so Donna came back and we went through the same thing here. She lives in Mill Valley; her group is organizing this event.

— Sally Quinn

“This morning in the Washington Post there was a statistic about how 85% of Americans are Christians.”

— Sally Quinn

“I first came on the scene during the Johnson years and that crowd was out all the time enjoying themselves. Nixon wasn't particularly social but a lot of the people in his administration were.”

— Sally Quinn

“I was brought up by an Episcopalian father and Presbyterian mother in nondenominational Army chapels all over the world and never really had much religious experience.”

— Sally Quinn

“It is only in the fundamentalist religions that women are relegated to second class. Radical Evangelicals, Muslims, and Jews all have the same view of women.”

— Sally Quinn

“Every poll shows that most journalists are Democrats.”

— Sally Quinn

“I think, certainly in the more civilized societies, women's roles are growing in power all of the time.”

— Sally Quinn

Most of the people who live in Washington come from other places and you can learn something from them.

— Sally Quinn

“We're newspaper junkies; I can't imagine life without a newspaper.”

— Sally Quinn

“We've been together 32 years and married for 27.”

— Sally Quinn

“Even Colin Powell who was everywhere before he became secretary of state, just stopped going out. I think part of it was he didn't want to be viewed suspiciously by the other people in the White House who rarely go anywhere.”

— Sally Quinn

“Last week I did a piece for Style on advice to Laura Bush about how to help her husband. This week it's religion. It just depends on what I find interesting at the moment.”

— Sally Quinn

“Often what we do is open our house for various charity events. I don't seat according to protocol. I don't invite people because of who they are in the administration or their positions of power. The few who do come, are there because I like them.”

— Sally Quinn

“I would rather live in McCain's world than Obama's. But I believe that we live in Obama's world.”

— Sally Quinn

The primary motivation in the world of television is fear. People are scared to death. Ambition and enthusiasm and interest and the desire to excel are secondary. Because fear is an enormous motivating force, many in the medium are afraid to make decisions, take chances, do anything innovative.

— Sally Quinn

“Social climbing and power climbing
the two are often synonymous
are what make Washington run ... If there are more than two people together, if there are three, one of them is climbing.”

— Sally Quinn

“Washington is, for one thing, the news capital of the world. And for another, it is a company town. Most of the interesting people in Washington either work for the government or write about it.”

— Sally Quinn