It was really wonderful playing with Aretha [ Franklin]. I knew that she knew what she was doing, so all I had to do was sit in the background and vamp a little bit.

It's so much a part of me that it's almost hard to describe myself in the absence of [faith].

My mom was a teacher - I have the greatest respect for the profession - we need great teachers - not poor or mediocre ones.

This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it. Things have changed.

The first Republican I knew was my father and he is still the Republican I most admire. He joined our party because the Democrats in Jim Crow Alabama of 1952 would not register him to vote. The Republicans did. My father has never forgotten that day, and neither have I.

You do have to keep in mind as you're going through extraordinarily difficult circumstances, that if you stay true, true to your values, if you stay true to your principles, if you believe in these values, then you can work in that context to right policies that may not be working.

America is a remarkable place in that social attitudes change almost imperceptibly, and then you wake up the next day and they've changed. But they've been changing all the time.