There's no question that any of us who are doing an honest job in government could do a lot better in private industry. During the years I was practicing law as an individual, my salary was a great deal more than it is now.

My job is to interpret the law based on how the legislature and the court has done it and then, of course, to use our system of justice to develop some new legal tools and new concepts.

Whether or not we can save Lake Michigan, whether or not we can avoid a breakdown in our criminal justice system are more important than whether or not I'm going to be governor.

He convinced me that if we're going to have honest government that you can't leave it up to the crooks and that honest people have to get involved in government. So I did. I got involved as a criminal prosecutor with the U. S. Justice Department.

It would be great if politics were fact-based, but it is not, and it is surely not nuance-based. What works in a classroom or a think tank does not work on Capitol Hill or in the White House. Obama sometimes seems to be running the Brookings Institution, not the country.

Being a family member is hard no matter where you are. It's hard to be a kid. It's hard to be a parent. It's hard to be a brother or sister. It takes patience and kindness and forbearance.

Democracy passes into despotism.

When I was a little girl, if I didn't eat my soup, my mother would say, 'You have to think of all the Chinese children who have nothing to eat.' But now, for my children, Chinese people make everything, and for my grandchildren, they buy everything.