We live in an interdependent world. Every time you cut off somebody else's opportunities, you shrink your own horizons.

One of the main reasons we ought to re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to constructive cooperation... He appointed Republican secretaries of defense, the Army and transportation. He appointed a vice president who ran against him in 2008.

Music, to me, was - is - representative of everything I like most in life. It's beautiful and fun, but very rigorous. If you wanted to be good you had to work like crazy. It was a real relationship between effort and reward. My musical life experiences were just as important to me, in terms of forming my development, as my political experiences or my academic life.

I mean, you know, this idea that somebody we disagree with on economic or social policy or something we have to turn into some kind of ogre or demon, I think, is a mistake. I mean, it's like telling the American people or half the American people that don't agree with you they're all fools. That's just not true.

[It] has a lot of things in it that I like, but I think it's way too hard on financing things from immigrants.

I am grateful to President George W. Bush for PEPFAR, which is saving the lives of millions of people in poor countries and to both Presidents Bush for the work we've done together after the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Haitian earthquake.

Together, people with good hearts and fine minds can move the world.