Your friends and your family, if you're close to them, they won't let you get too far from who you were or from who you are. And so I love staying close to people who've always known me. That's probably the best leavening that you could possibly have.

We need a common enemy to unite us.

It has been hard to muster the resources to support fledgling democracies and to intervene on behalf of the most desperate. The AIDS orphans in Uganda, the refugee fleeing Zimbabwe, the young woman who has been trafficked into the sex trade in Southeast Asia. It has been hard, yet this assistance together with the compassionate work of private charities, people of conscience and people of faith, has shown the soul of our country.

You never cede control of your own ability to be successful to something called racism.

I don't like anything that's "just an escape." To me the best part of golf is that, unlike my tennis game, I can actually get better. I've probably reached my plateau in tennis, but in golf I have a lot of room for improvement. I really enjoy working on my game. I like practicing. I chart my rounds.

The sooner you learn that life is not fair, the better off you'll be, because you'll spend less time railing against life's unfairness and feeling aggrieved and entitled, and more time figuring out how to maximize your assets, and your talents and how to deal with things that you're not very good at.

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.