My mind-set is Munich. Most of my generation's is Vietnam.

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.

You have to learn to interrupt because you aren't going to get called on.

In diplomacy, clear-cut wins and losses are rare.

In A Man With a Pipe, my brother observed that although my father had been seen as intellectual and my mother more a creature of temperament, she had often been the more levelheaded of the two. In sum, we miss them as we love them, equally and always.

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 have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, 'So what's the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.' Most of her lifetime, it's true. But at the time it really was a big deal.