From year to year environmental changes are incremental and often barely register in our lives but from evolutionary or geological perspectives what is happening is explosive change.

I think if there's something one needs to change with oneself it doesn't have to happen in the New Year. You can do that any time you please - not that it's not a good inspirational tactic for the people that it works for.

There is no question that climate change is happening the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.

When I joined Bill Clinton's start-up presidential campaign in 1991 I was confident that women would play an ever more important role but I never gave a minute's thought to what would happen if we won. When we did - and I became the first woman to serve as White House press secretary - it changed my life. But it didn't change the world.

Probably the most visible example of unintended consequences is what happens every time humans try to change the natural ecology of a place.

To some extent Seattle remains a frontier metropolis a place where people can experiment with their lives and change and grow and make things happen.

Anyone who's lost someone to cancer will say this that you have to struggle to try to remember the person before the diagnosis happened because they really do change - as anyone would change.

Sometimes I have these fantasies of just moving to a foreign country and coming back with a full head of hair. Or not even come back! Make a new life there with hair... Change my name just see what happens.

If you don't change then what's the point of anything happening to you?

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.

As human beings we are vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience if something has never happened before we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future but the exceptions can kill you and climate change is one of those exceptions.

Miracles happen everyday change your perception of what a miracle is and you'll see them all around you.

What we think determines what happens to us so if we want to change our lives we need to stretch our minds.

Change will never happen when people lack the ability and courage to see themselves for who they are.

I remember things that happened sixty years ago but if you ask me where I left my car keys five minutes ago that's sometimes a problem.

'Blind Curve ' the book I'm working on now sprang from a crazy incident that happened to me last year while on my book tour. I was pulled out of my car for a minor traffic violation - an incident that escalated into my being thrown into cuffs and told I was going to jail. Except in my story the hero doesn't get off as easily as I did.

Can you imagine a guy breaking into your car and he steals your guitar case 'cause he thinks it's a guitar and he gets it home and opens it up and there's a rake inside it an electric toilet plunger and a dog skull? That actually happened.