I still believe in the possibility of the United States, with all its will and all its strength, and I don't just mean military, persevering against any challenge. I still believe in that.

As countries grapple with modernization, people who are left behind tend to hold firmer and firmer to their view of the evil of modernity.

The controlled chaos is one way to get creativity. The intensity of it, the physical rush, the intimacy created the kind of dialogue that leads to synergy...

A peace deal requires agreements, and you don't make agreements with your friends, you make agreements with your enemies.

Know something about something. Don’t just present your wonderful self to the world. Constantly amass knowledge and offer it around.

Bureaucracies have a natural tendency not to cooperate, coordinate or consolidate with each other. They won't cooperate with each other - unless they are forced to do so by political level authority.

Diplomacy is like jazz: endless variations on a theme.

World War I was not inevitable, as many historians say. It could have been avoided, and it was a diplomatically botched negotiation.

A world without the United Nations or with a paralyzed United Nations would be far more costly to all of us and far more dangerous to peace and stability.

It's an improvisation on a theme. You know where you want to go, but you don't know how to get there. It's not linear.

Nothing generates more heat in the government than the question of who is chosen to participate in important meetings.

The truth of course was otherwise, but Lecha had never felt she owed anyone the truth, unless it was truth about their own lives, and then they had to pay her to tell them.

Each of us has our definition of adventure: ending an unsatisfyingrelationship, returning to school, parachute jumping or training for amarathon. Go ahead. Get your thrill on.

Fire failure by fighting falsehood. Forget the fears

History is the nothing people write about a nothing.

Cary rocked back on his heels and twirled one index finger around another in a sign meaning, wrapped around your fi

The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.

I came out of Capitol Hill. Well, that's just not an ordinary background for a writer of the ordinary American sort.

I react emotionally to everything!

I try to be patient. I feel like the point of art is to go down within yourself and to pop up into other people. If you're lucky, all of a sudden you're like, "whoop!" You're in other people.

If we can't even spend a short amount of time each day with God in solitude, our spiritual formation will be seriously stunted.