Being an American is a state of mind, and to be in a family is to feel the power of belonging, the power of your roots. Family is a tree, the strength of a tree, the roots, the leaves, the past and the present, the future, the fruits, the seeds.

I love being irreverent. But I hate being irrelevant. I love being irreverent because at the end of the day your actions belie your intentions.

I'll never lose the sense of being an underdog.

I see myself being a father, hopefully a husband, but I'm very gun-shy. The older I get, the further the goalpost.

America needs a restart. It has long devoted its energies to solving its many big problems - unequal opportunity, crumbling infrastructure, lagging education, inadequate training in a changing economy, and threats to peace around the world.

The great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

I knew trucking was growing. It grew from the Second World War to the time that I bought the bridge. There were interstate highways being built. I thought there was opportunity.

By the fall of 2007, my last remaining Iraqi friend in Baghdad had left. Once he was gone, my connection to the country and the war began to thin, even as the terror diminished. I missed the improvement that came with the surge, and so, in my nervous system, I never quite registered it.