Instead of noblemen let us have noble villages of men.

On bad days I think I'd like to be a plastic surgeon who goes to Third World countries and operates on children in villages with airlifts and then I think 'Yeah right I'm going to go back to undergraduate school and take all the biology I missed and then go to medical school.' No. No.

Lincoln's stature and strength his intelligence and ambition - in short all the elements which gave him popularity among men in New Salem rendered him equally attractive to the fair sex of that village.

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.

There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way.

When I gave birth to my fourth child I suffered from post partum hemorrhaging. I almost lost my life. I was lucky to be under the care of trained health care personnel. I started wondering then what was happening to women in rural villages.

One lesson that every nation can learn from China is to focus more on creating village-level enterprises quality health services and educational facilities.

Remember the rights of the savage as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own.

The building of friendship family community and love is complicated. We are so isolated in this country no longer supported by tribes and villages.

Being famous as a writer is like being famous in a village. It's not really any very heady fame.