[My favorite dish to cook] is fried chicken, and by the way I'm good at it, too. I make really good fried chicken.

My favorite quote is Thomas Jefferson`s "The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time." Well, he was a slave-owner. But these institutions, while they weren't perfect at the time, did allow people to prosper and to continue to struggle and build toward them. That's what you need, is good institutions and I think people will eventually live up to them.

It hasn't yet materialized that I went into sports management, but I haven't ruled it out yet, either. I only half-jokingly remarked that I'd love to be the commissioner of the NFL. But as I recently told current Commissioner Roger Goodell, that job looked a lot more appealing when I was struggling with the Russians and the Iranians everyday.

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.

What surprised me was the angst at our democracy. And I understand it - I teach at a university and feel it in my students - but what I've tried to say to people is that we have amazing institutions, but nobody ever said we were perfect. We struggled before and we're struggling now, and we're going to struggle every day. We're a work in progress. That's why the American experience is so important for us to remember, and for us to be a beacon for others to enjoy those same rights.

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

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.