When somebody underestimated me, it made me want to prove them wrong.

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.

Separation of powers is a problem for foreign policy.

For the United States, supporting international development is more than just an expression of our compassion. It is a vital investment in the free, prosperous, and peaceful international order that fundamentally serves our national interest.

In the segregated South, education was almost like armor. It was a way to put yourself in a category where even with the slings and arrows and humiliations of racism and segregation, somehow you had better control of the situation. I always said my parents understood that you might not be able to control your circumstances, but they and their parents believed that you could control your reaction to your circumstances.

I'm a terrible long-term planner.

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.