I firmly believe you never should spend your time being the former anything.

Once a month I play with a chamber music quartet. I play almost no solo music anymore because I so enjoy the interaction. The members of my quartet have become some of my best friends and so I really enjoy it now in ways that I didn't before.

When people see the terrible scenes of violence on television, when we mourn the death of each and every American man and woman in uniform or a civilian that's killed in Iraq, that it's hard to see the progress that's being made and it's hard to believe that this is all going to come out for the better.

I have no doubt that as the Iraqi security forces get better, and they are getting better and they are holding territory and they are doing these things with minimal help, that we are going to be able to bring down the levels of our forces. And I have no doubt that that's going to happen in a reasonable time frame.

I've always said that I expected to grow up and get married like any nice southern girl, but the fact is you don't get married in the abstract. You find someone that you'd like to be married to.

We [USA] need to deal with our problems here at home if we're going to be strong enough to lead abroad.

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.