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's so much a part of me that it's almost hard to describe myself in the absence of it. I know that for me it means asking for guidance, and that in the toughest times there's a personal savior that I can rely on. And I'm very grateful to my parents for giving me that.

At no time did I intend to, or do I believe that I did put forward false information to the American people.

We have our differences with Russia. And some of those differences produce conflict. But by no means is this the Soviet Union. We have far more areas of cooperation with Russia than we have areas of conflict.

I certainly have no regrets about overthrowing Saddam Hussein. I'd do it again. And, yes, there are a lot of things that I think we'd all do differently. Maybe we made some erroneous assumptions about the fabric of the society in Iraq and about the solidity of some of the institutions. And yes, there are a lot of things I would do differently. I'd probably work to rebuild Iraq from the outside in, rather than concentrating so much on Baghdad, for instance.

Differences can be a strength.

We're in the middle of the transformation of a society that has handled its politics through repression to a society that will handle its politics through democratic institutions.