I was fifteen in college at Tulane. I lied about my age in college so that I could be normal socially. So that girls would go out with me and stuff like that. I just said I was normal age.

Berlin is a very edgy place, a very cosmopolitan place. It's a place where completely different ideas and cultures come together and clash in a very warm way. In a very warm-hearted way.

NASA is increasingly not the future of space exploration. I love the fact that we have private sector folks devoting a lot of money to stimulate innovation in space technology.

The developed world should neither shelter nor militarily destabilize authoritarian regimes unless those regimes represent an imminent threat to the national security of other states. Developed states should instead work to create the conditions most favorable for a closed regime's safe passage through the least stable segment of the J curve however and whenever the slide toward instability comes. And developed states should minimize the risk these states pose the rest of the world as their transition toward modernity begins.

I think graffiti is part of Berlin culture. You think about what the Berlin wall meant and how visible that was in everyone's life. How it was a part of their very identity.

Strong states and blocs of strong states are the only source of power and legitimacy capable of driving an international agenda in today's world.

Deeper state intervention in an economy means that bureaucratic waste, inefficiency and corruption are more likely to hold back growth.