Learn to say 'I don't know.' If used when appropriate, it will be often.

Reduce the number of lawyers. They are like beavers - they get in the middle of the stream and dam it up.

The Secretary of Defense is not a super General or Admiral. His task is to exercise civilian control over the Department for the Commander-in-Chief and the country.

Don't necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.

We know where they are [Iraq's weapons of mass destruction]. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

We do know of certain knowledge that he [Osama Bin Laden] is either in Afghanistan, or in some other country, or dead.

Be precise. A lack of precision is dangerous when the margin of error is small.

If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much.

Look for what's missing. Many advisors can tell a President how to improve what's proposed or what's gone amiss. Few are able to see what isn't there.

Love can be simply the absence of tension.

If you read every poem in every anthology of Greek poetry, you wouldn't read one poem in which a character of the woman who's loved is described or matters.

The best sci-fi stories use the fantastical to remind us of the reality of who we are today, the hope of who we may become tomorrow, and the shame of who we were yesterday.

A woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams a shadow annihilates them.

I love bacon, but I don't think we need it on everything.

I think about women and their thoughts and ideas, and I suppose when I'm painting them I'm getting to be them, in a sense. That is why I plainly paint women.

Children are like TV sets. When they start acting weird, whack them across the head with a big rubber basketball shoe.

Did you ever admire an empty-headed writer for his or her mastery of the language? No. So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

One of them hung a pink bra from our lighting fixture. I left it there. It was a nice bra

I don't know that we're really going to need a label for the things we're thinking about doing next.