Never Invite Sally Quinn: The Illustrious Washington Hostess on Ben Bradlee, Jill Biden and the Sexiness of Silence

00:00:32 Andrew Keen: Hello everybody. Yesterday we had the Yale historian Samuel Moyn on the show. He has a new book out called Gerontocracy in America, in which he rails against what he calls the old guard in America. They're controlling the money and the power still, they're not handing it down to the younger generation. I wonder whether he's particularly fair about that old guard. At the weekend, I saw the great Bob Dylan in Berkeley. He's just 85 years old. He was born on May 24, 1941. I couldn't find Dylan for this show. He's a hard man to track down, so I got the next best thing, Sally Quinn is a very distinguished American hostess, one of the powerhouses, if not the powerhouse of Washington, DC. She was born about five weeks after Dylan, on July the first, 1941 [as spoken — some published bios give January 7, 1941]. So she's still only 84, and I'm thrilled that she's joining us from her little office in Washington, DC. Sally, welcome to Keen On America.

00:01:23 Sally Quinn: Well, thank you so much, and I'm sorry you had to mention my age, but there I'm celebrating my 85th in a couple of weeks, and I'm having a big birthday party.

00:01:43 Andrew Keen: Lovely. Did you ever meet Bob Dylan? Have you met him?

00:01:43 Sally Quinn: I don't think so. Actually, no.

00:01:43 Andrew Keen: Do you think he would have accepted one of your dinner party invitations?

00:02:00 Sally Quinn: Yes, he would have.

00:02:02 Andrew Keen: But you didn't invite him.

00:02:04 Sally Quinn: No, just we didn't run in the same crowds. Yeah, I had a few friends in the music business. Kris Kristofferson was a great friend of mine, and, but I just never ran into Dylan, and but I think he would have been happier to have an invitation from me while I was still married to Ben Bradlee, who was my late husband,

00:02:30 Andrew Keen: who was the editor of the Washington Post? I suspect he would have enjoyed meeting you too. Well, there's still time. In all seriousness, you probably haven't seen Moyn's new book on gerontocracy in America, but do you think he's right? Is his argument that the old guard has too much power in America, that your generation, so to speak, hasn't handed down its political power and wealth to the younger generation?

00:02:43 Sally Quinn: I do. I think that's right. I mean, it doesn't mean that people who are older shouldn't have a role. I mean, I work full time, and so do most of my friends my age, and I think we contribute a lot, but I think that having people who are older, I mean, I see what happens to a lot of my colleagues who get to be a certain age and they lose it, and you can't - nobody can know who's going to lose it and who's not going to lose it, but it's not a pretty thing when it happens, when people start losing their memory and they repeat themselves, and they can't hear anything, and they're feeble. You can't, you can't run an organization, run a country, certainly not run a country with those kind of problems and issues, and you know, I surround myself with a lot of younger people, particularly younger journalists, because I just, I feel so energized by them, and I love their, I love their excitement, and their idealism, and their, their optimism, and their energy. It's just so much fun to be around them, and I just, I think it's a mistake for this country to sort of rely on people who are too old, and that is particularly in Congress, and now we have the White House. We've got two elderly presidents, neither one of them was able, is able to really function properly.

00:04:22 Andrew Keen: What did you make of the Biden presidency, and certainly the post presidency, and this latest issue with his wife, and some people believe her misrepresentation of what really happened.

00:04:38 Sally Quinn: Well, I like Joe Biden very much. I always liked him. I met him when a couple weeks after he was elected. We were both kids, and I've covered him over the years, and I was very happy when he beat Donald Trump, but it became clear at least halfway through his administration that he was really losing it, and since my husband had dementia, I knew all the signs, and I got to the point where I was with Ben, where I'd listen to him speak publicly, I get a knot in my stomach. I couldn't wash it, because it just made me so I would just cringe, thinking he was going to say something wrong or forget something or make a mistake. And, of course, the debate was my worst nightmare. I had been through a similar situation with Ben only. It wasn't a presidential debate where he'd spoken publicly and just lost it, and it was horrible, and that from then on I didn't let him do anything else publicly after that, but the thing was that everybody in the White House knew what was going on with Biden, and his inner circle kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller, and people just weren't telling the truth about it, and I wrote a piece for the Washington Post, basically blaming Jill, because I compared her situation to what I was, what was going on with Ben and me, I was saying my whole job, as I saw it, was to protect him, protect him from being embarrassed or humiliated, and from himself, and but I didn't have the country to worry about, and I, you know, she knew, but more than anybody, and better than anybody, and I gather that there was a lot of back and forth at the White House over whether he should run again and not run again, and she was in favor of it. He wouldn't have run if she hadn't been in favor. She could have said, "Okay, pal, you're on your own, and that would have been the end of it, but she didn't. She kept on, and right after the debate, he came out. She raised her arm, and you know, yay, victory, victory, even though she now admits that she thought he'd had a stroke, or that, and admitted to him that he screwed up, and then the next day they were off campaigning again in North Carolina, where she was raising his hand, and victory, victory. It was just inexcusable. I considered it to be elder abuse, because she put him through the paces, not only before the debate, but also after the debate. She should have gotten him out of there immediately that he couldn't handle it.

00:07:18 Andrew Keen: I don't think many people would disagree. Sally, it was a real thrill for me. We met at a recent book party in Washington, DC. I'd actually heard you on the Andrew Sullivan show, and was really, really enjoyed your, your conversation with Sullivan. Not everyone will know about you in your life. Perhaps it's a generational thing, too. On your website, you describe yourself, or somebody describes you as a Washington powerhouse, how would you introduce yourself? How would you introduce your life?

00:07:58 Sally Quinn: Oh, hi, I'm Sally Quinn, a Washington powerhouse.

00:08:01 Andrew Keen: You look like one, Sally.

00:08:04 Sally Quinn: I didn't write that. I always am amused by the way people see me when they say I'm powerhouse or I'm this or I'm that, because I don't feel like that. I feel like an army brat who came to Washington and really lucked out. My father was in the military, and we, I moved here after I, we went to Germany. I went to Germany with my father after I graduated from college and came back here and my parents were very social and the military has a very social life and so I had a very social life with them and so I was used to it and I knew a lot of people in Washington and I became one of my jobs was social secretary to the Algerian ambassador and which was a lot of fun, and then Ben Bradlee hired me, because he had heard about me, and he needed, they would, he invented style, the style section, which the first style section in the history of any news and journalism, and Ben Bradlee, of course, was what the editor of the Washington Post.

00:09:10 Andrew Keen: Yes, he was the editor of Washington Post.

00:09:10 Sally Quinn: And so he hired me to cover parties for the new style section, because he said to me when I went to interview him, Can you show me something you've written? I said, I've never written anything. Said, well, nobody's perfect. That was a good.. I bet you're impressed with that. Come in. I was, and so I went out the next day, I started the next day, went out and covered, went to a party, and came back and wrote it, and there it was in the paper the next day, and so that's how I got my start, and so I, I started covering parties, and then I moved very quickly into covering politics and doing profiles of famous people and politicians, and I think Repent, Ben, and I used to be called a power couple. They're always power couples in every city.

00:09:59 Andrew Keen: You were the one in the heels, although I know recently you've given up the heels, taken them off. Finally, you hung them up, hung my heels.

00:10:05 Sally Quinn: Yeah, no. I yeah, I walked down when Ben and I were driving down the street one day, and, and he screeched the car to a stop. There was this gorgeous babe, buxom babe, walking down the street in a miniskirt with just five minute stilettos, and I said, "What are you looking at? He said, "Oh, nothing. I said, "I mean. See that girl over there, he said, 'What girl? Then the one you're staring at, I said, 'Look at her feet. I said, 'That woman is in such pain, I can't tell you. She is desperate to get home and get those shoes off. And those women all have pain. That's why their faces are all screwed up. That's why they have lip injections to make them look like they're smiling.

00:10:51 Andrew Keen: Do you? There seems to be a certain look of a certain class, maybe the Melania, whatever her name is, Melania class in Washington, DC. Some of the celebrities, particularly the ones that get photographed or photograph themselves on Instagram, of this puffed-up look. What do you think of it, Sally, these days?

00:10:59 Sally Quinn: Well, I think it's grotesque looking. I mean, it's all the hair, and then the false eyelashes, and then the lip injections, and you know, the facelifts, and the pull faces, and the fake boobs, and the mini skirts, and the stiletto heels. It's just, it's a, it's a cartoon, they're cartoons, and they're cook-cutter cartoons. They all look exactly alike. You see, go walk into a party, you can't tell one from the other, and they all do it. And it's a way, it's, it's kind of like a passport into the Trump administration. You have to look that way, or else that you won't be accepted. And you see people come in the Trump administration who look like real people, and six months later they're just these cartoons.

00:11:57 Andrew Keen: Yeah, I know you're slightly ambivalent on Jeff Bezos. I am as well. I knew him in the old days, in the boom years of the 90s, but I was rather disappointed with the fact that he seems to have married one of these bimbos as well,

00:12:15 Sally Quinn: that's your word, not mine. Is

00:12:18 Andrew Keen: that an unfair word? Do you think for his new wife? I've heard that word used, but

00:12:29 Sally Quinn: that's not what concerns me about Jeff, what concerns me about Jeff is what's happened to the Washington Post, and he now says that he's in it for the long term, and that he's going to bankroll it, and all that, but the Post has been so badly diminished, it's going to take a long time for it to get back, if it ever does, you know he, they started cost cutting and firing people, and I mean layoffs and buyouts, and we've lost over 200 the most talented people in the newspaper, just walked out in outrage or were fired, and It's not the same paper it used to be.

00:13:09 Andrew Keen: Did you... I know at first you trusted him. I know you knew him, or you had.. I'm sure he came to your house for dinner. You entertained him. What is it that he's let you down on? What did you believe that Bezos would do with the paper that he hasn't done well?

00:13:32 Sally Quinn: I He never came to my house for dinner. He came to my house for my husband's reception after Ben's funeral, but I've met and had met him, met him the day he came to the post for the first time, and he, I liked him. I loved him. I thought he was great. He went upstairs. Ben, at that point, had dementia, and he went up to visit Ben. Ben knew who he was, but just wasn't able to really start a conversation, maintain a conversation. But Ben was thrilled that Jeff came up and paid his respects, and we were in the audience when Jeff got up and made a terrific speech about how there was a long runway, and how the Washington Post was a sacred trust, and he, he, he was buying a legend, and buying, I can't remember the words he used, but just buying this extraordinary institution, and how important it was to democracy, and he said all the right things, and then he, he, he let us alone, and we had a great editor, Marty Baron, at the time, and who was a, and happily, it was right, he was the perfect person for the Trump administration, because Marty was not the kind of, he was not, he was a take no prisoners guy, he was not a kind of person that backed down, and the post did fantastically well during that period, covering Trump. And then Trump went away, Marty resigned, and we had a new editor come in that didn't work out, and a new publisher. We had several different iterations of publishers and editors, all of which were disasters, and, and suddenly Jeff just started changing, and you know, I used to see him when he come to Washington, we would, I'd email him from time to time, and when things started going badly, I started emailing, and saying, at one point I said, this is. Is untenable what's happening in the paper, and then it just kept...

00:15:35 Andrew Keen: Did he respond when I wrote that?

00:15:39 Sally Quinn: No, he had responded before, but he came to the premiere of the movie The Post, where Tom Hanks played Ben and Meryl Streep played Kay Graham. Wonderful film, he was wonderful, and Tom was great, and it was a great movie. And Jeff came, and he was there by himself, I think he was in the midst of the separation or something, because I had really loved his wife, Mackenzie. She was a fabulous woman, very talented novelist, and a lot of integrity, and you know, just a great person, and he was there by himself, and he didn't know anybody. It was so funny to think of him then and now, because I went over and I said, "You're standing here alone, do you know anybody? or he said, "No. I said, "Well, let me take you around and introduce you. I mean, the idea of that is laughable now, but I took him around the room and introduced him to people, and he seemed to enjoy it, and so you know we had a good relationship, and then all of a sudden this Trump got reelected, and everybody went into shock when he gave money to the Trump inaugural committee, and then he donated to the ballroom, and then he paid for Melania, 75 million for Melanie's film, and then the thing that really shocked people was when he pulled the endorsement of Kamala Harris from the Washington Post three weeks before the election, and that's when so many people walked out of the paper, just stormed out, and they've dispersed to all the great other publications, The Atlantic, The New York Times, that The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, all the best people in Washington Post are scattered all around town and it was crushing, and then they started layoffs, and then buyouts, and it just went on and on until there was hardly anybody left, and nobody could understand, because Jeff was not around, he just didn't wasn't available for about a year, nobody talked to him, nobody saw him, and then he came back several months ago and had a meeting at his house, in which he had whoever was left at the paper over to talk about what was going on, and he says that he's in it now for the long haul, and he also said that he had people were asked, why don't you sell it, you know, because the general feeling is that he didn't care about the paper anymore, and he didn't, he said, no, I don't want to, and he said, I've turned down seven offers already, so the question is, what's going to happen now, he's got a new publisher, Jeff Donofrio, who's terrific guy and financially smart. The last two publishers have not been.

00:18:39 Andrew Keen: Yeah, you'd never trust British journalists, right?

00:18:39 Sally Quinn: Yeah, and we have a good editor, Matt Murray, who has really helped the paper through this terrible time, and he's kept it going and putting out a really good newspaper considering what kind of staff he has left, so morale is really low in the paper.

00:18:58 Andrew Keen: This is personal for you, Sally, isn't it? I can tell from the way you're talking about it.

00:18:58 Sally Quinn: Yeah, I've just been, as has everybody, I've been in a state of grief. It's like, I mean, to watch your democracy go down the tubes, and then watch your newspaper. It's just been unbelievably painful.

00:19:19 Andrew Keen: What does it feel like?

00:19:21 Sally Quinn: Well, it feels like a death. It really does feel, and you know, Ben was so much a part of the paper too, so it's like losing Ben all over again for me, very painful.

00:19:34 Andrew Keen: Are you hopeful at all that maybe either Bezos will wake up one day and say, I need to take this paper more seriously, or sell

00:19:44 Sally Quinn: it? I am hopeful. I have to be, and you know, I'm, you know, I'm always trying to recruit talent for the paper, and getting younger journalists to join the paper, and trying to talk people out of leaving the paper, and because, and you know, trying to talk my friends out of canceling their subscription, because he's saying you're only hurting the journalists who are there now, if you cancel the subscription, you're not hurting Bezos, and so we want to keep on the, we needed a big, you know, you ask anybody from the New York Times, they'll tell you we don't want the Washington Post to go out of business, because you just need to have other major newspapers, not right now, the only other one is the Wall Street Journal and. And you just need to have people who are all in the same boat who can support each other when the going gets tough, and it probably is going to get tougher before Trump leaves.

00:20:41 Andrew Keen: Sally, we're talking the week that Elon Musk's SpaceX went public, he's now the world's first trillionaire. Are you concerned with the appearance, I mean, Bezos isn't quite a trillionaire, but is an extremely rich man worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Are you concerned with this new class?

00:21:03 Sally Quinn: I think everybody is. I think everybody should be, because there's a moment when you have that much money, you have so much power, that more power than any government, and you have power, you really have power to destroy things, you can create things, but you can also destroy things, and you can destroy so many lives when you have that kind of power, and that's what's happening now, people's lives are being destroyed, people. People are getting fired from their jobs, and people are getting killed, and people are being overwhelmed. Their, their lifestyle is changing. I mean, it's, it's really hard to watch people have that kind of power over other human beings, and that's what kind of power it is. It can be life and death power.

00:21:51 Andrew Keen: What's it been like in DC over the last few months during the Musk-DOGE days, which seem to have, fortunately, gone away now in this second Trump term?

00:22:12 Sally Quinn: Well, well, I wrote a piece for the New York Times a year ago, in which I said everybody was distraught and desperate and helpless, feeling helpless and hopeless, and things have changed now, I think, because Trump has gotten so much worse and so much more out of control, and so frivolous in so many of his concerns. I mean, we're in two wars right now, and he's more concerned about the ballroom and the arch, the art to Trump, and the reflecting pool renovation, and you know, just on and on, and the coins with his name on it, the dollar bills, the name on it, and the big cage fight is going on in the White House this weekend. I mean, those are the things that he clearly cares more about, and you know, with the war in Iran, it's like, you know, one day we made a deal, oops, we haven't made a deal, we're going to bomb the hell out of them. The next day, we've made a deal. It goes back and forth, and at one point he said, I'm bored with this, I'm just not interested in this anymore. This is the war in Iran, but he's fanatic about the ballroom, and so I think the polls have changed considerably since last year, since I wrote that piece, and American people are seem to be turning on him. I think one of the things that has caught, caused so much despair is the way the Republicans in Congress have reacted to Trump, which is they've totally gotten down on their knees and licking his boots, and it's just horrible to see these people who used to have some who used to be respectable turn into these toadies, um, Mark Warner, the senator from Virginia, who's head of the intelligence deputy head of the intelligence committee, said to me the worst thing that's ever happened to me in my life and my career is watching these friends of mine, who I used to like and know and respect, turn into these Trump minions. They just will do anything he says. So, I think that will continue until their voters start making their wants known now.

00:24:30 Andrew Keen: Yeah, we shall see. Certainly by the midterms. Did Donald Trump ever cross your social appear on your social radar? Did he ever get an invite to any of your dinners?

00:24:43 Sally Quinn: No. Let me just finish. You asked me how the mood in Washington right now.

00:24:46 Andrew Keen: Yeah, sorry, go on.

00:24:46 Sally Quinn: I think it's changed considerably since then. I think that people in the Washington community are now not feeling hopeless and terrified, they're feeling fighting mad. People are, you know, now that the, you know, the midterms are looming, people are really angry, and saying we've got to stop this. This can't go on anymore. And you see, even the Republicans are turning around, they're turning on him, and they're not doing his bidding the way he wants them to. All of these issues that he's been put forward, you know, they even made them take his name off the. Kennedy Center yesterday, so I think that the whole atmosphere has changed, and that people are really fired up and geared up to win the midterms and get rid of him.

00:25:47 Andrew Keen: So you were asking me if I wondered whether you'd ever come across Trump before, before this political chapter, or couple of political chapters in his life.

00:26:00 Sally Quinn: I only met him once, and that was in New York, I think it was one of these Time magazine people of the year dinners, and we were there. Somebody we know was getting the award, and Trump came over to Ben, and he never met him, and put his arm around him, and started bragging, and bragged for like 15 minutes, surprise, surprise. And then he walked away, and Ben looked at me, and he said, "What a vulgarian, and that was the only time we ever met him.

00:26:35 Andrew Keen: Ben, of course, was also a scion of the American, real American elite, educated at the best schools, was very close to JFK, even wrote a book, Conversations with Kennedy. He, in some ways, was an example of the kind of elite, or perfect example of the kind of elite that ran the country. These elites now in crisis, not just Trump, but Epstein. What do you think Ben would have made of this crisis of the American elite?

00:27:05 Sally Quinn: You know, everybody asked me that. So hard to know. I mean, I think Ben would have been appalled, obviously. I mean, there's a big quote from Ben on the wall of the Washington Post that says that truth is always better than a lie in the long run, and Ben couldn't stand lying, that was the one thing he hated the most, and Trump is the biggest liar we've ever had in the White House, extraordinary liar. I mean, the post did a count of how many lies he made, did in the first term, it was 1000s, everything he says is a lie, and so I think that would have pulled Ben. The question is, what he would have done, and if he had been editor of the paper, he would have made sure that we had the best reporting, you know. If he hadn't been editor, Ben was not particularly he hadn't been editor, Ben was not particularly ideological. He was more just, get the facts, ma'am. I mean, he was... we would sit at the breakfast table in the morning, and I'd be reading the paper, and I'd say, “Oh my god, can you believe this?” Completely. One morning he said, “Is there anything you don't have an opinion about?” I looked at him and said, “Is there anything you do have an opinion about?” Because he just wasn't up for political opinions.

00:28:25 Andrew Keen: Well, he had an opinion about Watergate, didn't he?

00:28:25 Sally Quinn: Yeah, well, he had an opinion, yeah, but he had an opinion about the facts about Watergate, and the fact that Nixon was a crook and Nixon was lying, he did, but those were facts he had opinions about, and I remember one night after Watergate, we were watching the David Frost interviews with Richard Nixon, and Ben put his head down. He said, “Oh God, oh God, oh God.” I said, “What's the matter, Ben?” He said, “I just miss him so much.” “Who, Nixon?” “Yeah, he was such a great story.”

00:28:45 Andrew Keen: Yeah, well, there's that famous remark about Nixon, I think it was after losing the governor of California race — I think it was '62 or somewhere like that — when he said to the reporters, ‘You won't have me to kick around anymore.’ I think the same will be true of Trumpers at some point. But coming back to the elites, Sally, I mean, I don't speak on behalf of Ben, just from your point of view, I mean, obviously Trump and Epstein aren't typical of the East Coast elites, but could one argue that there is some sort of crisis that the American elites are not doing their jobs as elites, whether it's in government, in culture, in politics, in business, you talked about Bezos earlier.

00:29:54 Sally Quinn: Well, I think it depends on what you call elite. In the old days, elite meant your family background, where you grew up, who your parents were, where you went to school, private schools, what country clubs you belong to those with that's how you measure someone who is elite, education and travel and sophistication today. You know, people use elite, and I mean they talk about the Washington elite. I don't know what that means, because I mean, do you consider somebody like Cash Patel while. Washington elite, I wouldn't,

00:30:30 Andrew Keen: but if you consider — what word would you use to describe Patel?

00:30:30 Sally Quinn: Scary or Hegseth [as spoken] is another good example, I think someone who certainly isn't part of any elite, that's really terrifying, but if you, if you, I don't consider them Washington elite, because, because they're, they're not, they're incompetent, they're not good at their jobs, and I mean, even if somebody met in the old, in the not old days, but the older days, if you were, if you were in a high government official, you could be called elite, assuming that you were honest and competent, that your title would, would just give you that, but the title doesn't mean anything anymore. Just like getting the medal of freedom means nothing anymore. If you get a medal of freedom from Donald Trump, it's just worthless, because it, you know, that's Trump's idea of who the elites are, and it's not anybody else's idea, but you know, used to, or the Kennedy Center Honors used to be for the entertainment elite, that's not true anymore either, with Trump in the White House, so the word elite just doesn't mean anything, it can be whoever I mean, he wanted, you know, what's Hulk Hogan was Trump's idea of elite, but it's not what anybody else would consider elite, so I think it just doesn't mean anything.

00:32:07 Andrew Keen: Is there a correct way, though? For I mean, you're, you've been around a while in Washington, DC, for the elite to behave, to go out to network. I know you were a little critical of the Obamas. You, you thought they should have gotten out a bit more and participated more in the Washington DC network. Is the right way for an elite to behave to go to Sally Quinn dinner parties and similar types of events.

00:32:36 Sally Quinn: I don't think Sally Quinn dinner parties cuts it. I mean, what I.. there's right way and wrong way. You, you, if you're in an office, you do what gives you pleasure or what works for you politically, and so there are a lot of senators and congressmen who never go out that, and they go to all these eviction official functions, you know, they'll be at the National Bread Bakers Association annual convention or something, but they wouldn't, they, you don't see them at cocktail parties or dinner parties, which is fine, I mean, if I were a congressman or senator, I would skip a lot of things I do anyway, but there's just so many big bashes going on every night. Washington can't go out every night with Obama's. It wasn't, I wasn't really critical, I was just observing that they, in the eight years that they were in the White House, they never.. I don't know a single person whose house they went to, except for their.. they had a tiny little coterie of friends, and they stuck to them, and they only saw them, and I don't know anybody whose house they went to for dinner or lunch or cocktails or anything, so I think that you know one of the things about the Obamas was because they were black, they had to be perfect, they had to be absolutely perfect in every way, and they were, I mean, there were no corrupt people in their administration, there were no scandals, the administration, he, they did everything right, they didn't make a misstep, they didn't, neither one of them ever said anything that was wildly out of the question or embarrassing or offensive, and the strain must have been incredible on them to have to be perfect all the time, but I think that it would have been more helpful for him as president if he had been more reached out a little bit more to some other people, like France's people in the Congress, which he didn't.

00:34:43 Andrew Keen: Sally, you're not just a Washington powerhouse, but you're also an author. Your new book is called Silent Retreat. It's a novel. Tell me a little bit about it. You were kind enough to send it to me after we met in DC, and I've been enjoying it. How would you describe it?

00:35:04 Sally Quinn: Well, I went to.. I belong to this group. I had a religion website at the Washington Post for seven years, which was really successful. I loved it, but it cost too much money, and the post had to, when we were losing a lot of money, before Jeff bought us, we, they had to get rid of it, so I belong to this group called PathNorth, which is for people who are CEOs who do well by doing. Good, and they do the sort of semi-spiritual activities, and one day they suggested we do a silent retreat nearby at this Berryville and Berryville, Virginia Monastery. So I went, and my husband thought it was a riot. He said, "You'll never be able to keep your mouth shut for three days, but I went, and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. It was a wonderful experience. I got to meditate, and be quiet, and you don't talk, you literally can't speak for the whole time you're there. You can go to these services, you can take walks, you can read. It was very contemplative, and I just, I loved it, and I started going every year after that, and at one point I thought it would be a great place to have a romance, and so I came up with the idea of these two people meeting, their whole lives are falling apart, and she is a New Yorker writer whose marriage is coming apart, and he is the Archbishop of Dublin, whose marriage to the church seems to be coming apart, and they both go there to try to find themselves, and they meet and fall in love and have an affair, and it's a very intense, very passionate book, and I love it. I love it.

00:36:49 Andrew Keen: Yeah, it's described as sexy, sophisticated. It's described as a sexy, sophisticated, soulful love story. Do you think you could have written this in your 20s or 30s? Or, coming back to where we began, about the wisdom not of youth, but of the wisdom of old age? Do you think it requires you to live a bit before writing this kind of book,

00:37:12 Sally Quinn: I don't think I could have written this in my 20s. No,

00:37:16 Andrew Keen: what have you learned then?

00:37:19 Sally Quinn: In the 60 years since you were 21, of the things that they both.. there's a monk there who acts as a sort of consultant, and they both go to see this monk, and that's how they talk, because in the book it's silent treats, so they're not allowed to talk to each other. They have an affair, but they can't talk to each other, and so they talk to the monk, and that's how the story unfolds. And I went to talk to this monk while I was there, which was really got me through Ben's dementia and death, this guy, in fact, I dedicated the book to him, but we, they talk a lot about their faith, and, and how their faith influences them, and influences their decisions, and their morals, and their values, and their ethics, and that's a lot I learned from doing on faith, the doing the magazine, I mean, the website on faith was actually studying religion and studying my faith and studying my own spirituality, and so that was it, was very engaging and very fulfilling time for me during that, and all of that came through in the novel

00:38:41 Andrew Keen: as the Pope Sally on the phone,

00:38:47 Sally Quinn: so yeah, no, but the thing was that it was I learned so much about myself during that time, and I think that I got to the point after Ben died where I thought I'd really done a lot of thinking, a lot of. I don't want to say praying, because sometimes I call it praying, sometimes I call it meditating, but I thought I had become the person I wanted to be, and then after Ben died, I sort of, I sort of fell apart a little bit, and I sort of came to the conclusion that I wasn't the person I wanted to be, and I had to do better, so I joined a Zen meditation group, Zen Buddhist meditation group, and I meditate with this group every Monday night for two hours. It really helps me a lot, because I so much about not being about you, but about being other people,

00:39:55 Andrew Keen: so let's end with the person that you want to be. How would you describe

00:40:01 Sally Quinn: it? Well, I think I'm a good person, but I want to be a better person. I want to be less self-involved, and you know, after Ben died, I was just closed in on myself, and, and I just felt like I was too closed in on myself, and so I started trying to reach out to other people. I'm not a people pleaser, but I wanted to embrace people, and one of the things that I've done is, I know it sounds frivolous, but it's not really. It is to have parties, dinner parties, and invite people, six or eight people, around a table and talk, and this whole time in Washington has been so horrible and so tense and so depressing that people are really anxious to come together and commune, it's like creating a community, and people come to the house, and we sit around, we have candlelight, and we drink a lot of wine, we have good food, and we talk, and we commiserate, and people leave feeling so much happier that they feel part of a community, like we're not in, we're not alone, and I like that feeling, and I feel like I've created that feeling, I'm trying to do that more all the time, because it makes me feel happier when I'm with a group of people than with them if I'm alone, and makes me happier if I'm creating some kind of a community of like-minded people who care about the country. I'm talking about good people, decent people, people with morals and values and ethics. I don't mean to sound like goody two shoes, I just mean like people we always used to know in life who, and there are a lot of people who are not like that in Washington now. It's a very toxic environment here, and so people who are of the care about those issues, who care about democracy in the country get together and talk. It sounds too high-minded, because we do have a lot of fun. We tell dirty jokes.

00:42:02 Andrew Keen: I hope next time I'm in DC, I'll get invited to one of these things. Let's end with Bob Dylan, of course. One of his most famous songs is Forever Young. Seems like, for all the wisdom you've acquired over the years, Sally, you've retained your youthfulness. Is that one way of thinking of it, that you never quite grew up? Is that how we should live our lives, by not quite growing up?

00:42:02 Sally Quinn: Well, I think it's more like enjoying, I mean, just trying to find the joy wherever you can. I've started doing improv about three years ago, and I've done - we do performances after the classes, and it's just the most fun thing I've ever done in my life. And the most of people are about half my age or younger, and that's just joyous. Every Sunday for two and a half hours, just laughing, and I started ballroom dancing, which I just love, and just makes me feel so happy to dance every week, and so all that combined, I work out every day, and I'm writing my memoir right now, my Washington memoir, that gives me a lot of pleasure.

00:42:59 Andrew Keen: Yeah, when's it going to be out? We're going to get you back on the show, for that, for sure.

00:42:59 Sally Quinn: Well, I'd love to do that. It'll be about a year and a half from now.

00:43:16 Andrew Keen: Yeah, well, I'm sure Ben would be amused if he knew about a book you wrote called Silent Retreat, since you never thought you could be quiet, right? Well, Sally Quinn, real honored to have you on the show. The new book, the new novel, it's out in paperback. It's Silent Retreat. Real honor to have you on the show, and we'll definitely get you again when the, the autobiography, the memoir comes out. And I'm on a, I want an invite to one of your, your dinner parties next time I'm in DC.

00:43:45 Sally Quinn: You're invited. The memoir's title is Never Invite Sally Quinn.

00:43:51 Andrew Keen: Brilliant. Well, that, that is a perfect title. I will be there. Thank you so much, Sally. All right, good to see you. Thank you.

00:44:02 Sally Quinn: Bye.