When I was growing up in the Forties and Fifties, you could hide your children from the difficulties of life, but today you can't separate children's contact with the adult world today.

It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.

A notion for a story is for me a confluence of real events, historical perhaps, or from my own memory to create an exciting fusion.

You get to about 65 or 70 and you lose friends and the world does seem to be an endlessly difficult place and tragic place, so it's more and more difficult for me to find the bright lights.

When I am speaking about American presidents, I have to speak about my very special relations with President Clinton. He contributed more to peace than anybody else in the American sense.

Treaties of peace, made after war, are entrusted to individuals to negotiate and carry out.

Peace of mind for five minutes, that's what I crave.

I think the American people are very smart in understanding our country is very trustworthy with nuclear weapons. We've had them from the beginning. But they have also been critical for keeping the world more at peace than it would have been if it hadn't been for the American nuclear umbrella.