Life sometimes brings enormous difficulties and challenges that seem just too hard to bear. But bear them you can, and bear them you will, and your life can have a purpose.

Après ski is my favorite sport.

I first interviewed Fidel Castro 39 years ago. He was charming and fiercely guarded about his private life. He called our interviews 'fiery debates.' During our times together, he made clear to me that he was an absolute dictator and that he was a staunch opponent of democracy.

Large cocktail parties are an infamous technique for ridding yourself of social obligations to people you usually don't know well or like much, which is such an unpromising beginning that I've rarely known one that recovered and turned into a great party.

I also found that for myself, since I've had no religious education, it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means.

It would be nice to feel that we are a better world, a world of more compassion and a world of more humanity, and to believe in the basic goodness of man.

I didn't have a very religious family.