No more than a surgeon can operate while tweeting can you reach your potential with one ear in, one ear out. You actually have to reacquaint yourself with concentration. We all do.

I think the point that we all agree upon is that we have to engage with Russia.

My second epiphany came as an intern at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The man I worked for was consumed with what was going on in Bosnia. And the more I knew [about it] the more saddened I was. There were these images of emaciated men behind barbed wire.... It was like, I've got to find a way to do something.

Re-examining our reasoning is not something that has come naturally to American statesmen.

International institutions are composed of governments. Governments control their own military forces and police.

I tell young people: If you make a job choice on the basis of something other than your nose or your gut, it's unlikely to work out.... It's perilous to look ahead and be like, "I'd like to be ambassador." I would never have gone to Bosnia or spent years writing about genocide. Do it on the basis of what you can learn.... It's like falling in love. Your whole dating life, you're thinking, On the one hand, on the other hand. Then you meet the right guy, and you're not in list-making mode; you're just with the person you're supposed to be with. Jobs are like that too.

'Acting as if...' I decided, ridiculously in retrospect, that my experience covering women's volleyball for my college newspaper was sufficient for me to at least try to become a war correspondent.