Spirit is like the wind, in that we can't see it but can see its effects, which are profound.

Building confidence and constructive relations between Sudan and South Sudan is urgent

The special relationship between the United States and Israel still stands. Our total committments to Israel's security and our hope for peace is still preeminent among all the other considerations that our Nation has in the Middle East ... But there need be no concern among the Israeli people nor among Jews in this country that our Nation has changed or turned away from Israel.

In the Great Depression in which I grew up and remember vividly, unemployment was over 25 percent, and over 35 percent where I lived. A grown man would work all day, 16 hours, for a dollar. I remember hundreds of people walking by, people who had come down from the North just to get warm. They would come to our house as beggars even though they might have a college education. People didn't have money. They bartered; they'd trade eggs or pigs. It was just completely different.

During the 1960s, we used twice as much oil as during the 1950s. And in each of those decades, more oil was consumed than in all of mankind's previous history.

I think I would have been much more attuned to the concerns of people who were desperately in need. I was unfamiliar, for instance, with the plight of those living in the small villages in the deserts and the jungles of Africa.

I look forward to these confrontations with the press to kind of balance up the nice and pleasant things that come to me as president.