You cannot be on one hand dedicated to peace and on the other dedicated to violence. Those two things are irreconcilable.

I think there's sometimes too much attention to a few people who do hold extreme views. Most Americans go about their lives living in communities that are increasingly multiethnic, increasingly multi-religious. And they are welcoming of people who are not like themselves. Now, I don't have rose-colored glasses about America, because I grew up in the segregated South. But I watch it every day. I think that Americans are very tolerant people.

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

You have to have a strong sense of your values and a strong sense of who you are, because there are a lot of events and a lot of people who will pull you in this direction or that direction.

The people of the Middle East share the desire for freedom. We have an opportunity - and an obligation - to help them turn this desire into reality.

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

Most middle-class Americans, even working-class Americans, encounter each other across racial lines all the time, but it gets really hard-core when you get into that witches' brew that is the combination of race and poverty.