Pearl Harbor caused our Nation to wholeheartedly commit to winning World War II changing the course of our Nation's history and the world's future.

Real friendship like real poetry is extremely rare - and precious as a pearl.

My office walls are covered with autographs of famous writers - it's what my children call my 'dead author wall.' I have signatures from Mark Twain Earnest Hemingway Jack London Harriett Beecher Stowe Pearl Buck Charles Dickens Rudyard Kipling Alfred Lord Tennyson to name a few.

All great enterprises have a pearl of faith at their core and this must be ours: that Americans are still a people born to liberty. That they retain the capacity for self-government. That addressed as free-born autonomous men and women of God-given dignity they will rise yet again to drive back a mortal enemy.

With Pearl Jam everybody is so good at what they do it's hard to get up the courage to say Can I sing this part or I want to play guitar. I feel like I have more courage to do that.

All art is autobiographical. The pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

Everybody knows about Pearl Harbor. The thing that really fascinated me is that through this tragedy there was this amazing American heroism.