Our effort to build stability through authoritarians in the Middle East for 60 years had given us neither democracy nor stability.

You might not be able to control your circumstances but you can control your response to your circumstances.

I don't think anybody can take the word of Saddam Hussein and his regime, and certainly an American president and allies who are obligated to worry about the safety and security of our countries, cannot take the word of this dictator, who lies, pathologically lies.

My parents elected me president of the family when I was 4. We actually had an election every year and I always won. I'm an only child, and I could count on my mother's vote.

I've always said that I expected to grow up and get married like any nice southern girl, but the fact is you don't get married in the abstract. You find someone that you'd like to be married to.

I'm a committed Republican. I believe very strongly in individual liberty. I tend not to think much in terms of group politics. I really am a kind of small government person and I'm most certainly a fiscal conservative and strong on national defense.

I grew up in a very loving middle class family. My parents were educators. I'm not even the first PhD in my family. They tried to shield me, just as other parents in my neighborhood tried to shield their children. But you knew there was a reason that you couldn't go to that theme park or to a movie theater or to a hamburger stand. They couldn't shield you completely. What they did though was they never let it be an excuse for not achieving, and they always said racism is somebody else's problem, not yours. They tried in that way not to make us bitter about Birmingham.