It's incumbent on good public servants to maintain their voices and originality of thinking.

Happy Father's Day -- or as they call it in my family, happy brother-in-law's day.

Manners. Manners will get you through anything.

You eat a lot of goat stomach when you're in North Africa. You eat whatever's put in front of you. I am a big proponent of that.

I had siblings from South Asia, from East Asia, from depressed communities around America, and you know, we'd have long conversations.

I know full well how important women are in diplomacy and development. I grew up with seven sisters.

Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government - I wasn't left a lot of margin for error. It's kept me driven.