Everybody in the world is capable of democratic development. Some people in the world are unlucky enough to get stuck with really bad political leadership and with really bad political institutions.

It was really wonderful playing with Aretha [ Franklin]. I knew that she knew what she was doing, so all I had to do was sit in the background and vamp a little bit.

What you know today can affect what you do tomorrow, but not what you did yesterday.

Race is a constant factor in American life. Yet reacting to every incident,real or imagined, is crippling, tiring, and ultimately counterproductive.

There clearly are contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented; there clearly is testimony that some of the contacts have been important contacts and that there's a relationship here

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.

In America, with education and hard work, it really does not matter where you came from; it matters only where you are going.