Kids are falling through the cracks and nobody notices it. That to me is what's wrong with the school system.

I care much more about saving the lives of mothers and babies than I do about a fancy museum somewhere.

We look in our own backyard and say, 'How do we help at-risk families, at risk youth? How do we think through some of the problems affecting the Pacific Northwest and make some change there?'

If you invest in a girl or a woman, you are investing in everybody else.

You are indebted to life until you help some less fortunate person, just as you were helped.

If we're going to make progress on this issue [of contraception], we have to be really clear about what our agenda is. We're not talking about abortion. We're not talking about population control. What I'm talking about is giving women the power to save their lives, to save their children's lives and to give their families the best possible future.

If you don't invest in the woman, empower her, give her the things she needs to lift her family up, you're just not going to make the progress that you want to make. But if you put her at the centre, you can change a lot for that family, and it has ripple effects through the economy.