When a father absent during the day returns home at six his children receive only his temperament not his teaching.

During the long process of history by relying on our own diligence courage and wisdom Chinese people have opened up a good and beautiful home where all ethnic groups live in harmony and fostered an excellent culture that never fades.

Courage means to keep working a relationship to continue seeking solutions to difficult problems and to stay focused during stressful periods.

We believe the ice sheet was not around all the time. It was only around during cool snaps of the climate.

THE GODS was my first professional band and I learned a lot during that time. It was very cool playing with so many great musicians as it helped me to learn.

Sitting at the table during Color Purple and looking up and suddenly realizing I was acting in front of Steven Spielberg was pretty cool. It was pretty good.

That is who Barack Obama is - a person of admirable character - and that is who he has remained for me over these last four years. I have not agreed with his every decision but never once have I seen him break his cool lose his composure or abandon his insightful perspective - even during the most serious and/or absurd national disasters.

It is an interesting fact that during my tour I was never allowed access to computers radios or anything else that I might damage through curiosity or perhaps something more sinister.

I wrote somewhere during the Cold War that I sometimes wish the Iron Curtain were much taller than it is so that you could see whether the development of science with no communication was parallel on the two sides. In this case it certainly wasn't.

However even during the preparations for action we laid our plans in such a manner that should there be progress through diplomatic negotiation we would be well prepared to cancel operations at the latest moment that communication technology would have permitted.