Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

I am a happy person and I choose to be a positive person. I think some people think my life has been tragic and there have been these horrible dramas but things really have been and are fine.

But nobody is listening to those points. They are just listening to the gossip which is saying that I knew I was positive for all these years because I had a faked test a few years ago.

With what all these people are saying do you think that anybody wants to be around me? They all think that I did this on purpose? That I knew that I was positive for so many years? I feel now that I'm going to be attacked if anybody sees me or if I go to the office.

We've certainly learned a lot of lessons from Katrina from Rita. Rita was better than Katrina. We're doing a better job planning. We're closer - more closely aligned with the Department of Defense. These things would be positive things if we were to have another attack.

I mean you know I get a tremendous positive charge every day just from knowing these kids and who they are. I mean Larry my 12-year-old son is my hero in life. Could there be a greater privilege than that? I mean I can't imagine anything that would be more exciting.

The only way that we're going to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we've put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that.

Facing the press is not easy but because you have to go you have to try to take a lot of positive things for yourself from these face-to-face meetings.

I presume that nobody will deny the positive aspects of the North American cultural world. These are well known to all. But these aspects do not make one forget the disastrous effects of the industrial and commercial process of 'cultural lamination' that the USA is perpetrating on the planet.

The job numbers are positive. We've had more jobs created now than were lost during the recession. We're seeing that the creation we're seeing those numbers not only grow but shift toward the private sector and shift toward full-time employment and these are all signs that the recovery is taking some hold but we're not out of woods.

Political folk talk a lot these days about 'messaging' - a neologism designed to describe the way in which parties and politicians consciously characterize their efforts. It is only intended to be positive - i.e. 'Our messaging is designed to show we care.'

You have to listen to the people who have a negative opinion as well as those who have positive opinion. Just to make sure that you are blending all these opinions in your mind before a decision is made.

People meet in bars after work all over the world and talk about the great problems of life and death and the world and politics and they don't take themselves seriously. They can do nothing else except chat about these things in bars after work.

I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy with kings queens dukes and court politics but of course like what I was explaining before about making the science make sense you have to make the politics make sense too.

I always had a long-term view of going into politics so I suppose I was always careful. I mean I got offered all these rinky dink tax deals but I always paid my taxes. I am naturally quite conservative.

There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues the populists the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the realm in politics.

These days politics religion media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.