The thing women must do to rise to power is to redefine their femininity. Once, power was considered a masculine attribute. In fact power has no sex.

In Washington, the public and the private intertwine in such a way that they can't be easily separated. This is the city where the personal and the political are most closely linked.

We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.

For more than eight decades, Washington has been my hometown. ... It is a city that offers me more people -- more different kinds of people -- than I could otherwise possibly have come to know in a lifetime: the native Washingtonian, the local merchant, the foreign diplomat, the ever-present tourist, the public servant, the journalist, the president, the friend.

The longer I live, the more I observe that carrying around anger is the most debilitating to the person who bears it.

If one is rich and one's a woman, one can be quite misunderstood.

No one can avoid aging, but aging productively is something else.