It was actually fun to write [memoir], because I went back to interview people my parents had taught or who had worked with them, and I learned a lot about them that I hadn't known.

[I'm] very fortunate and blessed person who still has a lot of living to do.

Well, I didn't feel that I could do justice to this story of my parents and their generation, and all that they did to make it possible for me to be who I am, if I sort of just put it at the beginning of a book about my last eight years in foreign policy.

I think our dependence on foreign oil is a real problem, potential Achilles heel, and we have to do something about it.

I'm actually genuinely optimistic about the United States and what's possible in the United States. And when you're out here, you see Americans across racial and economic and socioeconomic lines working together. And you maybe get a little bit less cynical than when you sit in the seat of kind of the epicenter of it all.

Sometimes people decide to write reports even though they haven't been to Guantanamo . And so I would just suggest that people look at some of the work that's been done by people who have been there. But that's not to say that we will not be very glad at the day that conditions permit the closure of Guantanamo and the trying of its inhabitants or for their release.

If you cannot allow people to do their jobs ... nobody with substance and creativity will work for you.