Writing has been an important exercise to clarify what I believe, what I see, what I care about, what my deepest values are. The process of converting a jumble of thoughts into coherent sentences makes you ask tougher questions.

Leadership isn't just legislation, that it's a matter of persuading people and giving them confidence, and bringing them together and setting a tone.

I'm not going to Wall Street [after the presidency]. The amount of time that I'll be investing in issues is going to be high. But it'll be necessarily in a different capacity.

The American people are a non-ideological people. They very much are looking for common-sense, practical solutions to the problems that they face. Oftentimes they've got contradictory senses of various issues and policy positions and I don't think that either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party necessarily capture their deepest dreams when those parties are described in caricature or in policy terms.

Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs

Let's say I'm on the policy wonk end of the spectrum. As much as I can dive into a briefing book and really work to master various subjects that come before my desk, I'm still not an expert on a huge amount of the stuff that we work on.

Jesus is an historical figure for me, and he's also a bridge between God and man, in the Christian faith, and one that I think is powerful precisely because he serves as that means of us reaching something higher.