Either one lives 'for' politics or one lives 'off' politics.
My politics, and my religion as well, are based entirely on the loveliness and value of ordinary human lives. The creaky apparatus called politics shelters or oppresses or threatens these lives, and is therefore of interest.
A politics that is not sensitive to the concerns and circumstances of people's lives, a politics that does not speak to and include people, is an intellectually arrogant politics that deserves to fail.
The politics of personal destruction, the politics of division, the politics of fear, it's all there. It helps you to define the politics of moderation - the politics of democratic respect, the politics of hope - more clearly.
Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people's lives.
People will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women IS politics.
I've always followed politics, and I think politics is everybody's business because we're electing someone who's going to be making important decisions that will affect all of our lives.
We need a new kind of politics. Not the politics of governance, but the politics of resistance. The politics of opposition. The politics of joining hands across the world and preventing certain destruction.
I've always championed women in politics. We just get stuck in; politics isn't a game. The decisions we make affect people's lives, and that is something we must all keep to the forefront of our minds.
Politics organizes our lives. We can't disregard it. Politics has lot of muck, lot of dirt. But that doesn't mean you have to be away from it. It's ubiquitous.
Politics is not predictions and politics is not observations. Politics is what we do. Politics is what we do, politics is what we create, by what we work for, by what we hope for and what we dare to imagine.
Being attentive to the things that add meaning to our lives alongside politics will help us inform our politics with the values that really do make America great.
All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.
Or they'll talk about fear, which we used to call politics- job politics, social politics, government politics.
I tried to explain in 'The Nine of Us' how we grew up with politics. At meals we talked about what was in the newspaper. We talked politics non-stop! Campaigning for our brothers was a part of our lives.
Those of us who work in politics can only make ourselves useful if our heads are filled with things that we can contribute to the political space. JFK had this quote about how if more politicians knew poetry and more poets knew about politics, the world would be a better place. Being attentive to the things that add meaning to our lives alongside politics will help us inform our politics with the values that really do make America great.