I realized that every sermon I preached should be designed not to 'teach' or 'convert' people, but rather to encourage them, to give them a lift. I decided to adopt the spirit, style, strategy and substance of a 'therapist' in the pulpit.

We all know that a church is not a building.

Goals are not only absolutely necessary to motivate us. They are essential to really keep us alive.

Today's accomplishments were yesterday's impossibilities.

We all ran barefooted on the dusty roads in our past, but now the Emperor wears shoes, and it is our responsibility to ensure that the barefooted child and the doting mother are afforded a holistic environment to realise their dreams and ambitions.

We had common interests in the beauty of the French language. We both had a tremendous love of jazz. We shared dreams of getting married and having a family, living in the country, leading an idyllic life.

I have never found out that there was in my family an artist or anyone interested in the arts or sciences, and I have never been sufficiently interested in my 'family tree' to bother. My father and mother had come to America on one of those great waves of immigration that followed persecution and pogroms in Czarist Russia and Poland.

I think that public service is tough on a family - no ifs, ands, buts about it. I have my own personal wishes, but they're not always front and center.