I'm happy and content in my life, and I chalk that up to wonderful parents and a wonderful God.

We still go out and elect people who we think are going to govern and better our interests. So we may not have the same confidence in the people we elect, but we still go out and elect them.

It is high time that the international community tell Saddam Hussein and his regime that this is not an issue of negotiation with the U.N. about obligations that they undertook in 1991.

If I wrote a book, I had to be willing at least to talk about some of my struggles, whether in my personal life, health crises, or the deaths of my parents, because there can too easily be a perception of me that my life just went from A to Z uninterrupted, without any ups and downs, and that's not a fair representation.

I believe that the Iraqis have an opportunity now, without Saddam Hussein there, to build the first multiconfessional Arab democracy in the Middle East. And that will make for a different kind of Middle East. And these things take time. History has a long arc, not a short one. And there are going to be ups and downs, and it is going to take patience by the United States and by Iraq's neighbors to help the Iraqis to do that. But if they succeed, it'll transform the Middle East, and that's worth doing.

Power is nothing unless you can turn it into influence.

When you have big historic changes, there are going to be ups and downs... There are going to be peaks and valleys. Some things are going to go right. Some things are going to go wrong. But as long as the strategic direction is going in the right way, that's really what you have to judge.