How much he was shaped by being in the hospital so much as a kid. Because he was sick, he was a reader, and because he was a reader, Kennedy had heroes. Because he had heroes, he went into politics. [Kennedy liked Sir Walter Scott, King Arthur's knights, and biographies of political leaders.] If he hadn't been sick, he might have been like everybody else in the family, a jock.

Five years from now, 10 years from now, there's going to be a huge Islamic population in the world, they're going to be nationalistic, they're going to be religious, and they're going to be militant.

The fact is he [John F.Kennedy] always had to have somebody around besides Jackie [Kennedy]. Whatever their relationship, he wanted company. I think it gets back to all those years in a hospital bed.

Canonization in modern times is a very, almost scientific process.

Just come in there and stand before a live crowd, thousands of people at an Ivy League School, like Eleanor Roosevelt said, always do what you're afraid to do.

I don't sense an [Barack] Obama party. I think politics is transactional for him.

His [John Paul II] humanity, combined with his extraordinary spiritual authority, was unlike anything I've ever met.