I've been the co-chair of the Non-Partisan Women's Caucus and vice-chair for several years taking a leadership role in this women's organization.

Among my activities was membership in the Boy Scouts I rose each year through the ranks eventually achieving the rank of Eagle Scout and undertaking leadership roles in the organization.

The leadership lost its nerve. Instead of taking the lead in the reform movement... they pulled the plug on it. They tried and are still trying to return the church to the dry ice of the previous century and a half.

Sometimes leadership is planting trees under whose shade you'll never sit. It may not happen fully till after I'm gone. But I know that the steps we're taking are the right steps.

Leadership - leadership is about taking responsibility not making excuses.

During the Cold War we gathered information by listening to the Soviets taking pictures of the Soviets and we allowed our human intelligence to decline.

But in my imagination this whole thing developed and I started mixing up old folk songs with the Beatles beat and taking them down to Greenwich Village and playing them for the people there.

The thing that most attracts me to historical fiction is taking the factual record as far as it is known using that as scaffolding and then letting imagination build the structure that fills in those things we can never find out for sure.

I never worry about people not taking my work seriously as a result of the humor. In the end the comic's best trick is the illusion that comedy is effortless. That people imagine what he's doing is easy is an occupational hazard.

Humor is the instinct for taking pain playfully.