I have the necessary lack of tact.

People shouldn't expect the mass media to do investigative stories. That job belongs to the 'fringe' media.

The problem is everybody is worrying about explosive vests and people with AK-47s. We live in a day and age when someone sitting in Somalia or in Chile or in Perth, Australia, can be sitting there with a laptop and can theoretically take down one of our power grids or part of our infrastructure and do infinitely more damage. Nobody talks about that. It's not a question of who comes into the United States. We're way past that.

And there will continue to be a specific threat, and there will continue to be terrorism, as there has been for as long as human history exists.

If we're able to identify our own ignorance, we can identify someone else's expertise. We learn how to listen to each other. And that is the foundation of human understanding.

To face despair and not give in to it, that's courage.

Our society finds truth too strong a medicine to digest undiluted. In its purest form, truth is not a polite tap on the shoulder; it is a howling reproach.