You have to be involved in terms of what's happening in your local neighborhood and what issues are there.

That's what building a body of work is all about. It's about the daily labor, the many individual acts, the choices large and small that add up over time, over a lifetime to a lasting legacy. It's about not being satisfied with the latest achievement, the latest gold star, because the one thing I know about a body of work is that it's never finished. It's cumulative. It deepens and expands with each day you give your best. You may have setbacks and you may have failures, but you're not done.

American politics is always somewhat fluid. In this age of social media, it means that voters can swing back and forth.

I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.

I was elected because I believed in what we call "grassroots politics," politics from the bottom up, not the top down.

Singapore was the very first South-east Asian nation to join the global coalition against ISIL (ISIS) coalition, and we'll work to sustain our momentum in destroying that terrorist organisation.

Here at home, we will strengthen our defenses but not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don't hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.