"He's a clown," my aunt Maryanne said during one of our regular lunches at the time. "This will never happen." I agreed. We talked about how his reputation as a faded reality star and failed businessman would doom his run. "Does anyone even believe the bullshit that he's a? What has he ever accomplished on his own?" I asked. "Well," Maryanne said, as dry as the Sahara, "he has had five bankruptcies."

“My grandfather was an adherent to Norman Vincent Peale's doctrine of positive thinking. ...It allowed room for nothing else, and there are times in our lives when we are legitimately distressed... sad... in pain. ...o be prevented to feel those feelings honestly and openly is a form of torture.”

“It's forcing the media to have a conversation that they've never wanted to have, and never have had, which is about Donald's psychological health.”

“I can't speak to whether he hates women, but what I can say because I grew up with it, is that women were... considered second class citizens. ...t explains his casual cruelty to women and... the ease with which he objectifies them. ...e certainly doesn't seem to ever have had any real deep emotional connection with wom, or well I guess with anybody, quite honestly. But he objectifies women and uses them in a way he certainly doesn't do with men.”

“Money is the only currency in the family. ...It literally stands in for everything else: love, affection, respect. It's understandable that... my family members would cling to it so desperately, and want to acquire it.”

“There's a big difference between having compassion and understanding for what somebody went through as a child, but that changes once you become an adult human being. Plenty of people have had horrible childhoods, and grow up to have empathy for other people and to care about doing good in the world. Donald is not one of those people, and he needs to be held accountable.”

“Once my Dad was out of the family business and was branded a failure, he and anyone connected to him no longer mattered. So there was this level of thoughtlessness around us. So luckily we were able to laugh about it, because it's really not very funny, although some of the presents were quite hysterical... to have your uncle and his wife, who were extraordinarily wealthy, give you a 3-pack of underwear for Christmas... was a bit beyond the pale... My mom... was even lower on the totem pole than I was... Donald didn't even recognize that they were presents that he had given me.”