I wasn't heroic because I was never in danger.

I respond very easily to outside events. One's life is a matter of chance. Nothing that you've arranged for yourself works out.

Some people revel in taking risks, and some go through life taking no risks at all.

I know crowds of people who go to church and the synagogue who aren't religious.

The U.S. does not want to live under the shadow of a North Korea that possesses long-range missiles capable of delivering nuclear payloads to American cities. At the same time, the U.S. has no appetite for a war that would prove costly by every measure.

What makes me unusually intense is that I personalize the pain of war, the pain of children being killed, the pain of a 16-year-old who has been permanently cheated by his school and cannot read.

I feel beautiful when I'm at peace with myself. When I'm serene, when I'm a good person, when I've been considerate of others.

I descend from both Philadelphia Quakers and Carolina colonists whose families were separated by the Revolutionary War. That helped give me insight into the agony of Patriots who, until the British government denied their claims, had always, like Ben Franklin himself, thought of themselves as free-born Englishmen.