We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.

Out of struggle very often comes victory.

If I wrote a book, I had to be willing at least to talk about some of my struggles, whether in my personal life, health crises, or the deaths of my parents, because there can too easily be a perception of me that my life just went from A to Z uninterrupted, without any ups and downs, and that's not a fair representation.

We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly Saddam can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

When you have big historic changes, there are going to be ups and downs... There are going to be peaks and valleys. Some things are going to go right. Some things are going to go wrong. But as long as the strategic direction is going in the right way, that's really what you have to judge.

Unless we improve our ability to provide a quality education for underprivileged kids, we're not going to really overcome in a massive way our past.