When we're trying to solve difficult national issues its sometimes necessary to talk to adversaries as well as friends. Historians have a word for this: diplomacy.

I think the personal relationships I established mattered in terms of what I was able to get done. And I did bring women's issues to the center of our foreign policy.

I'm not a person who thinks the world would be entirely different if it was run by women. If you think that, you've forgotten what high school was like.

I am the only high-ranking U.S. official to ever meet with Kim Jong-il, and we are the same height and both wear high heels.

The bottom line is, the more we have a cadre of women moving up the scale, and it doesn't seem threatening, and people realize that women actually work much harder than men, and realize that they need more women in these jobs, I think that goes away.

We have a responsibility in our time, as others have had in theirs, not to be prisoners of history but to shape history, a responsibility to fill the role of path-finder, and to build with others a global network of purpose and law.

A skilled diplomat rarely generates extreme reactions.