Our strategic dialogue with China can both protect American interests and uphold our principles, provided we are honest about our differences on human rights and other issues and provided we use a mix of targeted incentives and sanctions to narrow these differences.

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.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

The other thing that happened was that we have a tendency to project our own weaknesses onto another woman. I don't think men do that particularly.

I am by nature a worried optimist.

We are very hip on the fact that America's always No. 1. On this we are not, in terms of the number of women in our legislative branches and obviously as head of state. We need to push on that. I hate to say this: It isn't all men's fault. I think some of it is our own attitude and approach. Some of it very healthy, that women want to make choices about their lives and how they want to spend their time, and what they value.

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