A leader must not let critics set the agenda.

There are many qualities that make a great leader. But having strong beliefs, being able to stick with them through popular and unpopular times, is the most important characteristic of a great leader.

You gather a certain number of people around you but, you know, they look - they look - they didn't look to me like people who were, you know, carefully studying political science and were all upset about the ideology of the election.

When people endure a traumatic event, they are either defeated or made stronger. On Sept. 11, I told New Yorkers, "I want you to emerge stronger from this." My words were partially a hope and partially an observation that people in New York City handle big things better than little things. I could not be more proud of the way my city responded.

I always felt, and I still feel, that the media doesn't belong in a public official's private life. It's a very difficult balance, because if you are elected to public office, people have a right to know a great deal about you, and the press has an absolute obligation to report all of that. But the reality is that there are times in which the reporting is really happening for almost voyeuristic reasons, in the gossip columns. Maybe half of it is wrong, and half of it is correct, and a lot of it is exaggerated. You've just got to get used to that if you're in public life.

I know both Secretary [Hillary] Clinton and President [Barack] Obama were very gracious and I respect that a lot in the way they handled it the day after, two days after. But I wish they would says something about it too. Because after all, these are supporters of President Obama and Hillary Clinton and maybe they could say something about this. Really not the right thing in the democracy.

People have a right to protest; they have a right to make their opinion. They can be very upset about what they consider to be a murder of a person in custody, but you cannot destroy property. First person does it goes to jail.