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.

There was no silver bullet that could have prevented the 11 September attacks. There was nothing demonstrating or showing that something was coming in the United States. If there had been something, we would have acted on it.

I'm very proud that we stood for the proposition that no man, woman or child should ever have to live in tyranny. We believed in democracy and promoted it.

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

We need to fight protectionism with everything that we have because when there's a level playing field and when you have open markets and when free trade is flourishing, American workers, American farmers, Americans are going to benefit.

When you're in government, of course, you have protection and you have people who are looking out for your wellbeing, but you can't live in a state of fear. If you do, you're not going to do your job very well and you're going to give yourself high blood pressure, which probably isn't worth it.

I hope that all of us who were fortunate enough to have benefited will put our time, our resources and our efforts into making sure that kids, particularly kids without means, have a way to achieve.