The most important American addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare mankind for all its later surprises.

You have people come into your life shockingly and surprisingly. You have losses that you never thought you'd experience. You have rejection and you have learn how to deal with that and how to get up the next day and go on with it.

But as environment minister I am very interested in a thriving German automobile industry because I can only pay for the rising costs of environmental protection at home and abroad if there are people in Germany with jobs and who pay taxes.

Moreover the practical recommendations deduced from ecological principles threaten the vested interests of commerce it is hardly surprising that the financial and political power created by these investments should be used sometimes to suppress environmental impact studies.

May this plain statement of facts prevail on the friends of the rising generation to interpose for their welfare that the education of children may no longer be to parent and master a lottery in which the prizes bear no proportion to the enormous number of blanks.

As for my diet I try to eat lean clean and healthy - nothing too surprising. And I avoid too much meat or dairy because they slow you down.

Language philosophy and science are interwoven into the design of words which are manipulated to create surprising illusions.

I have an all-Japanese design team and none of them speak English. So it's often funny and surprising how my ideas end up lost in translation.

It's normally the kiss of death to be identified as a rising star or someone to watch.

I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.