I think there really is no shortcut to sovereignty.

I think we Americans, of all people, understand the importance of a good, legal, constitutional framework as the basis of political life.

I leave Iraq gladdened by what has been accomplished and confident your future is full of hope.

I hope they're going to learn, and as a result of our response, that it isn't going to work. They're not going to change our life, they're not going to have us throw out our Constitution, and they're not going to chase us out of the Middle East.

It is certainly not unrealistic to think we could have elections by mid-year 2004 and when a sovereign government is installed - my job here will be done.

We try very quickly to show that we are not at war with the Iraqi people. We're trying to deal with the people who are indeed themselves at war with the Iraqi people.

If you look back today over the last 25 years, it is a fact that we have had a progressive degeneration of our intelligence community in general; in particular in the field of human intelligence.

Iraq is a better place, absolutely worth it.

While it's very hard to know exactly how to measure public opinion there, because there's no really good polling, the fact of the matter is that in all the polls I've seen the vast majority of the Iraqis prefer to be free and are pleased that the coalition freed them.

We've thrown out Saddam and Saddam, dead or alive, is finished in Iraq.

These people hate the United States, not for what we do, but for who we are and what we are.

Saddam spent 35 years stealing and wasting money, and all of these systems are very fragile and brittle, and you try to fix one thing and something else gets in trouble.

I think what we've learned is that the terrorist threat is serious, but it shifts. You cannot make a single person the sole focus of your counterterrorism.

I think the Iraqi people have shown extraordinary patience and courage in the last few months. They have really put a political system on the way to success, to a real democracy here.

There are 40,000 Iraqi police on duty around the country. If they detect an attack about to happen, the police are the ones who are supposed to stop it.

I think there really is no shortcut to sovereignty.

You know, the country is basically peaceful.

When the new wave of terrorism came on the modern world, which is the late 1960s, early 1970s, I think we spent about a decade, the United States and our allies, trying to figure out how to deal with it.

Iraq has become, for better or for worse, the front on the war on terrorism, and so we've got to do this, and I can understand why congressmen and senators would take their responsibility seriously, but I think in the end we'll get the money.

I'm a huge sports fan but have no interest in minutiae. I don't remember who won Super Bowls five years ago or listen to sports talk radio.

I'm not comfortable around guns.

Only a great genius like the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell can be mother, wife and novelist without solitude. I couldn't write until my youngest child went to school, and then I began - the first morning - and I've never stopped.

We've finally told the world that this is sports entertainment, and I think one of the best forms of entertainment is anything that's fun or funny, something that you really enjoy watching or listening to.

I'm a stand-up comedian-turned-actor-turned-vampire at night.

Kids are no fools: they're very sophisticated, they don't miss a lot; they don't miss nuance.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Never give up or quit on your teammates, because they will give up and quit on you.

A journey into space is the greatest adventure I can imagine.

We don't realize how hard it was to drive anywhere outside the major cities less than a century ago.

All a man's affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils.

Life, is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.

The LED light bulb is more than ten times the efficiency of regular incandescent lighting, so it can save the world hundreds of billions of dollars in electricity costs.

We now have an opportunity, though, to do something we didn't do in the industrial age, and that is to get a leg up on this, to bring the public in quickly, to have an informed debate.

How awful to be a perfect beauty! How confusing! God. Can you imagine?

I'm really fun. I'm ridiculously fun. I hope I'm infectiously fun.

If a man confessed anything on his death bed it was the truth for no man could stare death in the face and lie.

The only paradise is paradise lost.

I actually have a number of lovely watches from the International Watch Company.

Scholl Velvet Smooth Express Pedi is just great. You get yourself in a hot bath to soften up your skin and then use this, and it really works. Plus, it's so easy to do, and you don't have to leave the house, so whenever you want to put sandals on, you don't have to worry about going to the salon.

Less about politics, 'The Path to 9/11' focused on the emergence of radical Islamic terror as a clear and present American threat.

If I don't offend somebody, then I'm probably not funny.

I prefer to do movies, just for the simple fact that in TV, there's not much of a guarantee. They can pull the plug on you.

Critics often say, 'Oh she makes films about strong women'. Wrong; I make films about complex characters and the choices they make.