I think we all are people that are the product of our backgrounds. It's wrong to think that you're not.

In terms intellectually, [what] shaped my life was the whole Munich thing [the Munich Agreement] that I knew about all my life, in terms of how large powers make decisions that affect small countries, and the unintended consequences of that. The other part is I knew about the Holocaust. l just didn't know that it applied to my family. But that did affect the way I thought about what I was seeing as ethnic cleansing in the Balkans; there's no question about that.

I was struck by the joy of those pilots in committing coldblooded murder . . . Frankly, this is not cojones. This is cowardice.

I'm a problem-solver.

I think the hardest part [is] the priorities. There are an awful lot of things to do [being Secretary of State].

What you have to be concerned about are the extremists. On the whole, we need to understand the more moderate Muslims before they become more radicalized.

I hope I'm wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy - worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.