Having a bunch of medals and badges doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve achieved anything, you’ve got to do something beyond yourself to make a difference in life. Seek to be consequential in whatever you do.

As an intelligence officer, if you don't have a security clearance, you really don't have a job. My military position was, and has been, frozen, for four years.

If I'm strong, I'm not going to apologize for being strong.

When I fell, some people were in such shock that they didn't reach out. They were so mad at me, rather than having compassion for what happened. I lost a lot of friends.

A lot of women were betting on me because there were so few role models and I let them down. They had put me on a pedestal. I maybe enjoyed being in that limelight, but I couldn't reverse what I had done.

I was a Ph.D. student at a very reputable university, I was a Harvard research associate at one of the world's premier leadership institutions.

I had been working on a second book with [David] Petraeus called Relentless. Obviously that book and the income that it would have generated went away.