I am blunt sometimes; I am diplomatic sometimes; I am all things in between. Abrasive, you know, I guess it's in the eye of the beholder.

Be who you are. If you spend all of your time worrying about how people view you, you will not be either faithful to yourself or effective in what you're trying to do.

Progress is the product of human agency. Things get better because we make them better. Things go wrong when we get too comfortable, when we fail to take risks or seize opportunities.

You have to make change.

There are no cookie-cutter solutions that you can apply from one circumstance to another. They're different. Our interests, as implicated, are different. The tools we have at our disposal are different.

Focus on something that stirs your soul, it's hard to excel at anything that you don't love.

I have great ambitions for when I get out of government. I will watch a broader range of stuff.