As a child, I really did see buildings bombed, and what makes me different from an American that's the same age as I am is that I can understand what happens when there is fighting in a way that they couldn't.

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.

US is a very religious country. Separation of church and state is part of our credo, but that it is hard to understand since our money says "In God we trust" and every President says "God bless America".

China is in its own category - too big to ignore, too repressive to embrace, difficult to influence, and very, very proud.

I went to a girls high school and I went to a women's college and when I first started teaching at Georgetown it had been a single sex school and so they wanted to have some women professors when they went co-ed, and so I originally was hired to start a program there, and really encourage women to go into foreign policy. I always have done that, and I really do think that things are better when women are involved.

I was in Europe and it was at this stage that I fell in love with Americans in uniform. And I continue to have that love affair.

The world would be entirely different if it were run by women. I think it is true that we are more seeking consensus and don't have such big egos and have a variety of different ways of trying to get along. But anybody who says that the world would be better has forgotten high school. It depends on who the women are.