We all think we're different, but when it comes around, we end up needing the same things. Somebody to love us. Somebody to respect us.

But now, like a fallen sparrow On a golden chain, I'm forever bound in shadow, A prisoner to my pain.

Can you become The hope I need? Can you help me be More than it is written in my future Or past? Is there another me to find?

It is this language of values which I hope to bring to my books. . . . I want to bring values to those who have not been valued, and I want to etch those values in terms of the ideal. Young people need ideals which identify them, and their lives, as central . . . guideposts which tell them what they can be, should be, and indeed are.

I think that if we can't go back, then we should try even harder to go forward. And I do want to go forward, to a place where loving someone because they have a gentle smile and a friendly hello is as easy as it once was.

America believes what's good for us is good for the world. It's very difficult to understand that that's not necessarily true.

One of the lessons learned during the Vietnam War was that the depiction of wounded soldiers, of coffins stacked higher than their living guards, had a negative effect on the viewing public. The military in Iraq specifically banned the photographing of wounded soldiers and coffins, thus sanitizing this terrible and bloody conflict.