In the '90s, there was scant presidential leadership and insufficient domestic political mobilization for foreign policy grounded in human rights.

The story of U.S. policy during the genocide in Rwanda is not a story of willful complicity with evil. U.S. officials did not sit around and conspire to allow genocide to happen.

You could be in the United Nations office all night every night and still feel like you were not making a sufficient dent in the world's problems. I think the key is prioritization. But every job presents the tyranny of the inbox, of allowing the urgent to crowd out the important. So we have to have our lodestars.

I get to be married to the liveliest mind I've ever encountered.... I hit the jackpot.

My favorite things in life are my children. If somebody wants to understand me, there's no better window into that than my children.

Every working mother struggles with the BlackBerry, knowing the boss can call.

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.