When cutting staff at the Pentagon, don't eliminate the thin layer that assures civilian control.

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.

Familiarity has a way of filing the sharp edges off our feelings for other people. You'll see.

It is with our passions as it is with fire and water - they are good servants but bad masters.

All my books reflect travel adventures of some kind, and all have a soul: a spiritual or mystical underpinning.

I have too many control issues, so it just is not good for me to go and watch a film, too soon after I make it.

The truth of a myth...is not in its words but its patterns.

When you think of the sort of things that happen when a genocide happens, it's again not people who are intrinsically evil.

I'd ice-skated before, because I'm Canadian and that's what you do as a kid, but I'd never, ever been on quad skates.

How in the turmoil of life can love stand, Where there is not one heart, and one mouth and one hand.

It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops.

Impatience is a great obstacle to success; he who treats everything with brusqueness gathers nothing, or only immature fruit which will never ripen.