Girl Scouts offered a wonderful group of girls where common concerns and interests could come together. We could learn, be challenged, and support one another. It was a very positive aspect of my life and played an important role in shaping who I am today.

I think he [Vaclav Havel] is one of the great figures of the 20th century. He is one of the people that was able to be a part of overthrowing a dictatorial system by talking to people and understanding what the elements of democracy really are and respect for each other and elevating.

The sorts of sectors which feature so largely in the [Donald] Trump program, and its rhetoric, account now for perhaps only about 15 percent of the American work force.

I think one can see the [Donald] Trump program as if it were that element of the bailout of 2009 writ very large, and now extended out towards both fossil fuels, and, on the other hand, the infrastructure program, which is such a key element of the spending side of the Trump program.

That is certainly the promise of [Donald Trump] campaign and the promise of his economic program.This economic program is really the pickup truck of economic programs. It's the Ford F-150 of economic programs. It's about manufacturing. It's about oil, fossil fuels. It's a deliberate, forceful reassertion of an image of American industrialism that we have inherited from the 20th century.

There are many things we can live without but a sense of humor is not one of them!

The heyday perhaps of American public infrastructure is the Sputnik moment of the 1950s, the [Dwaight] Eisenhower administration, for instance, which rolls out the modern interstate system. The highway system of the United States is built during this period.