And then I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go to China in 1980, which was quite early.

But on the other hand, in the midst of the chaos, you find normal people. You find people who are willing to risk their lives to tell you what they saw, even though they have no dog in the fight.

Working overseas is more difficult in that it's much more complicated to get people to open their hearts to you and to tell you information.

When I see somebody being mistreated, my eyes tear up and I want to stop it. And I believe that the best thing I can do is to write about it, because if I insert myself into the equation it doesn't really do much good, but if I write about it I think it could do more good.

My main form of transportation at that time was a bicycle, because bicycles could move though the crowd.

Stanford had no journalism program so I just learned by doing, effectively.

I was posted to China in the summer of 1988, which was the greatest time ever, I think, to have been in China.

Good journalism, I think, represents life and if you try to organize something too neatly it usually blows up in your face and doesn't really happen the way you want it to.

The desire to become a journalist came really because I very much like living abroad, and like to travel, and wanted to be paid for it.

Whereas with foreign coverage there's a much broader disconnect between you and your audience.

And then I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to go to China in 1980, which was quite early.

I think some of the best reporters are the ones who can really illustrate the differences between societies, at the same time trying to connect the fact that there are a lot of shared values in addition to those differences.

One of the problems that we have as American journalists is that we bring the American cultural baggage with us and we plop it down and it follows us around and that's just a fact of life.

I went back to the States and started at a small newspaper in Riverside County, California, covering the police; I was making $280 a week covering the police.

I've been shot at on numerous occasions.

For me the much more significant question is what did the Americans do, if anything, to help the Croatian army, because they are the ones that changed fundamentally the map of Bosnia, not the Bosnian army.

I grew up in New York City in the late '70s, at a time when U.S. - China relations were something that was on the front page of The New York Times on a regular basis.

I think to a certain extent in Bosnia and among the Hutus in Rwanda and also among the Tutsis in Rwanda who then took revenge on the Hutus, there is a sense of being swept up and a sense that the society in which they live has gone mad.

The one indication that I got that I was doing the right job in Bosnia was that at different periods of time all the factions came down very hard on me.

When you do a job like this you have to like having cold sweat on your back.

And when they do spin out of control there are important ramifications that affect America, not just its direct national interest but its broader interests as a nation which has thought of itself as a beacon to other nations, of freedom, liberty, democracy, whatever.

A lot of times when we work overseas we tend to put the experience of someone who lives overseas, a Chinese person or a Korean person or a Bosnian person, within the prism of an American life.

The work is a calling. It demands that type of obsession.

Srebrenica was a horrendous war crime and it had to be uncovered.

I was fourteen when Kissinger made his secret trip to China, and then there was subsequently Nixon's trip to China, and I was very much seized with an interest in China.

I had my life threatened by Bosnian Serbs on numerous occasions.

In some ways the domestic reporting is a lot easier because Americans will talk to you about anything.

I think that's the main threat in Bosnia and Rwanda and Zaire. There doesn't seem to be much willingness to engage these problems unless they directly affect national security interests.

Green-tech could be the largest economic opportunity of the 21st Century.

What the war did was give me the opportunity of three years of continuous reading, and it was in the course of reading that I became convinced that I should become an economist.

I'll tell you what I did need to learn was tolerance, and I think I've been actually given a daily opportunity to practice that, and it's - it's - and I know that that sounds almost like a backhanded slap, and it is in a way because I haven't been successful at it every day.

Let's take a timeout. Let's allow investors the opportunity in a period of market calm to re-examine what's happened and to deploy new strategies into the marketplace.

We have a responsibility to ensure that every individual has the opportunity to receive a high-quality education, from prekindergarten to elementary and secondary, to special education, to technical and higher education and beyond.

When I talk to people in need, they tell me they want to hope; they are eager for opportunity; they are ready for better days. And I can tell you that every time their hopes are disappointed, all nations lose.

I was grateful for the opportunity to make a difference. The political violence really started in 1970-1971. The political difficulties start a little bit beyond that.

The men and women of our armed forces played an instrumental role in the election process - securing polling sites and providing security - that allowed so many Iraqis the opportunity to vote freely for the first time ever.

The opportunity to create a small world between two pieces of cardboard, where time exists yet stands still, where people talk and I tell them what to say, is exciting and rewarding.

Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.

Today knowledge has power. It controls access to opportunity and advancement.

I just have my own taste, and I just try and stick with that. I'm just trying to play as many characters as I can for as long as I have an opportunity to.

Education is our greatest opportunity to give an irrevocable gift to the next generation.

When I decided to get married at 40, I couldn't find a dress with the modernity or sophistication I wanted. That's when I saw the opportunity for a wedding gown business.

The promise of equal educational opportunity envisioned by the Brown decision remains unfulfilled.

If a window of opportunity appears, don't pull down the shade.

But it's been a great, humbling - and I've been very honored to have the opportunity to serve and to lead and to be the representative of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are in Washington. And it's been the greatest honor of my life.

To have an opportunity to make a movie like Cabin Fever, you have to get stuff thrown on you or you have to fall into a pit of water. It brings you that much closer to your mindset as a character.

Effective use of Braille is as important to the blind as independent mobility, knowledge in the use of adaptive technology, and the core belief that equality, opportunity and security are truly possible for all people who are blind.

If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.

I'm really happy that I got to work with such fresh talent. In a day when record companies are not particularly good at encouraging young, talented songwriters to come forward and get exposure, I think it's important to give tomorrow's songwriters the opportunity.