Have a deputy and develop a successor. Don't be consumed by the job or you'll risk losing your balance. Keep your mooring lines to the outside world - family, friends, neighbors, people out of government, and people who may not agree with you.

You're thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don't. I think that's old Europe. If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the east. And there are a lot of new members. And if you just take the list of all the members of NATO and all of those who have been invited in recently -- what is it? Twenty-six, something like that? -- you're right. Germany has been a problem, and France has been a problem.

Be precise. A lack of precision is dangerous when the margin of error is small.

A terrorist can attack any time, any place using any technique and you can't defend everywhere against every technique at every moment.

The price of being close to the President is delivering bad news. You fail him if you don't tell him the truth. Others won't do it.

What will follow will not be a repeat of any other conflict. It will be of a force and scope and scale that has been beyond what has been seen before.

If the staff lacks policy guidance against which to test decisions, their decisions will be random.