I don't know many people, if any, who have had some straight line toward success. I mean, they start here, they work hard, they've got what it takes, and they just go straight to the top over some number of years. Most people get a little failure.

I didn't come east of the Mississippi for the first time in my life until I was 26 years of age, but I knew. I read magazines, I listened to radio, I watched television. I knew there was something out there, and I wanted a part of it.

The questions don't do the damage. Only the answers do.

If you have a setback, and you're not doing well and then you overcome it somehow, it always sticks with you. You know it could happen again.

My mother did all she could to control me, but at age 14 she sent me to a military school.

It wasn't until the late '70s that a lot of people knew me.

In 27 years of reporting from Washington, I've never heard a President admit he made a mistake.