"You know, it's very clear, as one looks back on history again of the Cold War that, following the crisis in Cuba, following the Khrushchev - beating down of Jack Kennedy in Vienna, that President Kennedy believed that we had to join the battle for the Third World, and the next crisis that developed in that regards was Vietnam."

"I think the new generations in America, the America's youth, no longer care about Vietnam. They don't want to hear any more about it."

"We didn't lose Vietnam. We quit Vietnam."

"We didn't do anything wrong, but among the lessons learned, given the magnitude of the problems we now face in Afghanistan, a major U.S. force on the ground would convince the world we were in for the long-haul recovery of a country devastated by 21 years of warfare."

"To conquer fear is to realize that a single moment of clarity can change a lifetime."

"What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself."

"When characters change on screen, it makes you feel better about yourself. You think, 'Oh I change too, I'm constantly becoming a better person.'"

"I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up."