When Whitney Houston died I felt great sadness. My sadness of course was about our collective loss - when you listened to this nightingale sing your body would drop into a chair your head would tilt up a small smile would creep across your face and inside you knew that there was a higher power somewhere: gifted beautiful spiritual.

I'm chairing a UNESCO committee on how to improve global Internet communications for science help third-world people get onto the Net so they can be part of the process.

As I've gotten older I've gotten more liberal and my father is increasingly conservative. It's so shocking to me because I always thought we had the same politics. The day I realized we voted for different presidents I practically fell out of my chair.

I am a part of the political process whether the multinational forces are present or not. Politics is serving the people not chairs and positions.

It's much easier to wear a Chairman Mao button and shake your fists in the air and all that then to actually read the Communist manifesto and things like that and actually become involved in politics.

As they say one thing led to another and ultimately the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations which ironically began six years ago this week.

I enter negotiations with Chairman Arafat the leader of the PLO the representative of the Palestinian people with the purpose to have coexistence between our two entities Israel as a Jewish state and Palestinian state entity next to us living in peace.

As a young boy I read 'Cheaper by the Dozen' and immediately became neurotic about my use of time. It taxed me severely but only for the next 50 years. But I think it also allowed me to discipline myself to sit in the chair and be a writer where one of the most needed qualities is patience.

Nature is by and large to be found out of doors a location where it cannot be argued there are never enough comfortable chairs.

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.