By Thursday morning, we'd gotten over the worst of it.

You're feeling the responsibility for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people on your shoulder in a way that I couldn't feel as lieutenant governor.

They're calling their Washington sources at the NRC or in Congress and they're not hesitating to give their opinion, but their opinion, frankly, in those early days was not very well informed.

Nobody could tell us or really had a very good idea, if there were a massive release of radiation, what kind of medical treatment people were going to need and this or that, or, indeed, whether there would be medical personnel around.

It took me 45 minutes to get in all of the suits and putting all the dosimeters on me so that they knew how much radiation I got and the protective boots and everything.

All of the information that we were getting up to that time from the NRC people, from our people who knew something about nuclear power, was that the breach of the core was not a likelihood to happen.

The first one, obviously, was walking into my office at eight o'clock in the morning on Wednesday, and being told there was a telephone call saying that there was an incident at Three Mile Island, and that it had shut down and that beyond that we didn't know.

And I remember walking in there and, I must say, I was quite unnerved the closer I got to it.

By Thursday morning, we'd gotten over the worst of it.

You need a graphic understanding of a situation to make a complete judgment and we didn't have that.

And it was at that point that I realized, in fact, our whole administration realized, that we could not rely on Metropolitan Edison for the kind of information we needed to make decisions.

My time inside there was very short compared to the amount of time it took to take on and take off this suit and to test me for how much radioactivity I have.

None of us knew what this power plant looked like. We had no schematic drawing.

I was scheduled to give my first official press conference that morning anyway, 'cause I was chairman of the Governors Energy Council and I was making a press conference with regard to energy policy.

None of us are nuclear experts, but we know that if there is a melt-down and breach of containment, that's clearly the most odious thing that could happen.

What I had said in the morning was that this is what we know has happened, but there has been no significant off-site release. Only to find out moments later that, in fact, there had been an off-site release. I still haven't gotten over that.

There were schools and hospitals who were ready to take people with undescribed injuries, but not necessarily ready to take people with severe radiation poisoning.

There are allowable limits for radiation going - I mean there's radiation all around us. There's radiation from your television set. There's radiation from your computer. There's radiation actually occurring in the ground.

Another very strong image from the first day was giving my initial press conference in the morning - going down and finding out that everything I had said, the essence of what I had said, was wrong.

The value of government to the people it serves is in direct relationship to the interest citizens themselves display in the affairs of state.

But the issue became, how long do you keep the press waiting so that you can gather more information?

Obviously, I'm not looking in the core of the reactor, but I am looking at what, at that time, was considered the source of the trouble, which was the water and where it was.

And if you're not going to have a clear health threat, you don't want to panic people.

When I started walking and I looked down and I saw on the floor this water, which looked like, you know, water in your basement except it happened to be in the auxiliary building of a nuclear power plant.

And at ten, or whatever time, in the morning we had the press conference, what we knew is there had been an incident at Three Mile Island, that it was shut down, that there was water that had escaped but it was contained.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and EPA, et cetera, had worked out what allowable releases are.

It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

I love those tiny little onions in the spring that are so small they're almost like a little chive.

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated.

Be calm in the face of all common disgraces.

I remember when I was in my late teens just getting rid of lots of records, realizing I only ever listened to them when I was reading, or watching TV, or doing something else.

Ascetics and fakirs come to mitigate human suffering; to heal us and lead us on the path. They put up with criticism; they go through many worldly trials. Some of them have even become martyrs for our sake. But they have done all this with a smile and with gratitude to God. Hence sacrifice is a great virtue.

In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that individual communities should set obscenity standards. Whenever a case is tried, it will be based on a community standard for that particular place.

If you enjoy the fragrance of a rose, you must accept the thorns which it bears.

As I've gotten older, I've really wanted to find more balance and calm.

I'm not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself - then they get to say 'See, you did it yourself.'

It is important for women to know who they are, and to know what makes their hearts sing.

These days what's not worth saying gets set to music.

You can't treat an illness with cosmetic surgery, and that's why it would be great if there were qualified therapists in plastic surgeons' offices, and that people would go to a therapeutic meeting before plastic surgery. I think that should be part of the FDA requirement.

Is the patience of the American people that long suffering? Is there no outrage left in the country?

People have always heard voices. Sometimes they're called shamans, sometimes they're called mad, and sometimes they're called fiction writers. I always feel lucky that I live in a culture where fiction writing is legal and not seen as pathology.

The questions are scientific, but the UN answers are political. The global warming debate is hardly about science.

You watch people and study them the way an alien would.

You're rejected 10 to 20 times for every part you are going to get.

Conclusions are ignorance arrested on the path to less ignorance.

I've been writing about growing old for some time, really from the beginning of my career. It's something I'm apparently hung up about and now that I am old, hopefully I speak about it with some authority.

You can't trick The Universe - it's like Santa Claus that way.

I think that 'City of Heavenly Fire' is definitely a book where all the characters are tested to their limits, and they have to make really significant choices about who they are and who they wanna be.

It's more than a job. It's very personal, so when you're hurt, you're really hurt inside.