From the Corner of the Oval Quotes

“Steve Jobs: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Cynicism is fashionable these days. But I got to tell you, cynicism didn’t put a man on the moon. Cynicism did not create the opportunity for all our citizens to vote. Cynicism has never won a war, or cured a disease, or started a business, or fed young minds. I believe in optimism. I believe in hope…Don’t let the cynics get you down. Cynicism is a choice—and hope is a better choice.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“You’d think these “red-blooded” conservative congressmen who don’t want equal rights for gays or the right to choose for women would be embarrassed to have the NRA so publicly cupping their balls.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“What hope, what sense of progress, have we given the next generation if young men of color grow up knowing the odds are they’ll end up in jail or dead before thirty? It’s as though we all need to go back to third grade and remember that poster of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who said, “A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Katharine Hepburn’s voice: “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“The day I get to see Sam, we fly in to the Toledo Express Airport and motorcade to the Wolcott House Museum.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Maumee is the first stop,” Peggy says. “It’s a suburb of Toledo, Ohio.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Don’t waste your time on people who make you cry. You’re not going to get what you want from them and you’re going to miss out on the fun in the meantime. That’s what I’m talking about.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Life is too short to allow yourself to be treated badly,”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Of course it’s special. But the moment you start believing the job makes you special, that you’re an irreplaceable cog, that’s when you’ve become a D.C. creature. That’s when you’re in peril. We are made of guts and heart and stories, not titles and W-2s. We are lucky but we are nothing special. It’s a privilege and an honor and a job. Don’t trust anyone who tells you otherwise.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“I know that that sassy little minx called love will find me when I’m ready, but right now, it’s time to write.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“What the hell are we doing? And was it always this bad? Was the world always on fire and I hadn’t been looking up?”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“SO WHAT DO you do?” is the first question D.C. people ask, and the last question you want to answer if you’re unemployed, which I am. It’s October 2011, and since the summer, I’ve spent nine to five at my kitchen table writing cover letters no one will ever read. I keep setting”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Don’t waste your time on people who make you cry. You’re not going to get what you want from them and you’re going to miss out on the fun in the meantime.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“It says the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“fashionable these days. But I got to tell you, cynicism didn’t put a man on the moon. Cynicism did not create the opportunity for all our citizens to vote. Cynicism has never won a war, or cured a disease, or started a business, or fed young minds. I believe in optimism. I believe in hope…Don’t let the cynics get you down. Cynicism is a choice—and hope is a better choice.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“The world is what you make of it.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Everyone keeps talking about the end, but I keep going back to the beginning.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Whom are we protecting if not the children of Newtown, brutalized beyond recognition by an assault rifle, whose parents could not convince an NRA-fearing Republican Congress to pass a single piece of gun reform legislation? Whom are we protecting if not fifteen-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, shot and killed after taking her final exams? What the hell are we doing? And was it always this bad? Was the world always on fire and I hadn’t been looking up?”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“And if we win Toledo, we will win Ohio! And if we win Ohio, we’ll win this election! And if we win this election, we will finish what we started, and we will remind the world why the United States of America is the greatest nation on earth!”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“change is the only constant.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“That’s the beauty of guy friends—mostly they’re clueless, and even when they’re not, they’d rather not get involved.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“That’s the tricky thing with quiet guys in D.C.—are they reserved or just not interested in talking to people lower on the totem pole?”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“Being president doesn’t change who you are—it reveals who you are.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval

“She is, by all accounts, a more qualified adulteress—the Myrtle Wilson to Brooke’s Daisy Buchanan. Unsuspecting roadkill.”
― Beck Dorey-Stein, From the Corner of the Oval