President Obama has got the most moderate temperament.

Change doesn't happen with people sitting on their behinds, getting lazy.

If you want change, you have to make it. If we want progress we have to drive it.

It's not the day in which I grew up, long time ago, where we had three news networks. No cable, no social media, no internet. Where what you see is what you got. We had basically straight journalism. We don't have that anymore.

I was working with a number of African heads of state. And after their initial surprise, I think many of them just treated me as they would anybody else. They had to deal with me as a representative of the United States of America, and the United States of America was too important to be dismissed or ignored on any grounds.

I was very happy in my job at the United Nations.

The youth thing never really, from my vantage point, slowed me down. I think the harder audience for me to gain acceptance from was the career diplomatic corps that worked with and for me in the Africa Bureau.