You [young people] all are just much more internationally-minded and traveled and knowledgeable in languages than any other previous generation. So many of you are already doing a lot of international relations, I think. I so believe in student networks, and people that either study abroad or come to the United States to study, and the relationships that you all develop. You learn a lot from each other, but you all will see each other again in jobs along the way. And I think that makes a big difference. I so believe in what students can do.

The stunning part was that one time Neil McElroy the Secretary of Defense who was the father of one of our classmates spoke and basically at commencement, he told us all that our job after graduation was to get married and have interesting sons...and we all found that hard to believe.

Life is grim, and we don't have to be grim all the time.

I had more problems with the men in our own government, and not because they were male chauvinistic pigs but because they had known me for so long. I might have been a carpool mother and a friend of their wife, and so they'd been to my house for dinner and things like and they thought 'how did she get to be secretary of state when I should be secretary of state?' So that was more of a problem.

I spent my life studying communism and Soviet systems.

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

You think that the heads of state only have serious conversations, but they actually often begin really with the weather or, 'I really like your tie.'