I worked in the Senate in the 1970s. I worked for the Labor, Public Welfare Committee, and we had Ted Kennedy and my old boss, Bill Hathaway, and Walter Mondale.

I'm old enough to remember Richard Nixon. They called it the imperial presidency when he was refusing to spend money that Congress had appropriated.

My desire is to be as independent as I can be, as long as I can be, subject to being effective.

One of my life principles is that if something isn't working, doing something harder isn't necessarily going to produce the same result.

I started out, as most astronomers do, with a university job. But in my generation, women weren't very welcome at universities, and so I found a job in the government. And the government was appreciably more welcoming.

In the decade before the Civil War various north and south lines of railway were projected and some of these were assisted by grants of land from the Federal Government.

Being under the microscope meant I was never given any slack. I still managed to screw up plenty in life, mind you, but in the things I really cared about - the legal work, or the stories I was telling as a writer, or the office I built in government - I wasn't left a lot of margin for error. It's kept me driven.

The ruler who possesses methods of government does not follow the good that happens by chance but practices according to necessary principles. Law, methods, and power must be employed for government: these constitute its 'necessary principles.'