One of the issues I kept saying to my students is you have to learn to interrupt. When you raise your hand at a meeting, by the time they get to you, the point is not germane. So the bottom line is active listening. If you are going to interrupt, you look for opportunities. You have to know what you're talking about.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

I think the jobs [at the top] are unbelievably difficult, and there is nothing easier than second-guessing people.

We went to the same college so I know [Hillary Clinton's] study habits, but when she was first lady of Arkansas, she did a lot of things already for children, and she was head of the Children's Defense Fund, and that's how I first heard her or met her, she was very very involved in really a very important social program to do something about children and women and education.

I think that the Middle East is the largest piece of unfinished business that we all have. I happen to believe in the democratization process.

Women have to work exceptionally hard.

What distinguishes Americans from many people in the world is our kind of endemic optimism.