I believe it is incumbent upon Congress to act aggressively to ameliorate fear and help our country take the essential steps that will make our communities and lives safer.

The beliefs expressed in the Declaration of Independence remain a standard for our nation today. They also remain a standard for those nations across the globe striving to achieve democracy.

To date, every American citizen has nearly $27,000 in public debt riding on our backs.

In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, our nation has been put under considerable fiscal pressure.

I've learned to really listen to your family and friends. Because they want the best for you. Even if it's not what you want to hear, they're gonna tell you the truth.

There's something peculiar about writing fiction. It requires an interesting balance between seeing the world as a child and having the wisdom of a middle-aged person. The further you get from childhood and the experience of the teenage years, the greater the danger of losing that wellspring.

Economics is not an exact science. It's a combination of an art and elements of science. And that's almost the first and last lesson to be learned about economics: that in my judgment, we are not converging toward exactitude, but we're improving our data bases and our ways of reasoning about them.

We've learned a huge amount from organisations like Seva Mandir and Pratham, for example. In my personal experience, these organisations work on a very large scale with very poor people.