My relationship with the journalists who covered the campaign was complicated. I often hid from the critical eye of their cameras and their omnipresent digital recorders wary of the critique implicit in every captured moment. But I also grew to respect and understand their passion for their work their love for the journey we were sharing.

I've been working on Barb for a while. I looked at her as a sort of every woman. She's incredibly strong she's incredibly generous. She's seemingly insane because she is in the situation of a polygamous relationship but she had definite reasons to do it.

There are tens of thousands of interactions every single day across Afghanistan between the Afghan troops and International Security Assistance Force. On most of those every single day we continue to deepen and broaden the relationship we seek.

And across Afghanistan every single day Afghan soldiers Afghan police and ISAF troops are serving shoulder-to-shoulder in some very difficult situations. And our engagement with them our shoulder-to-shoulder relationship with them our conduct of operations with them every single day defines the real relationship.

On several occasions I discussed with Bill Clinton the subject of inquiries by the media about our relationship. He told me to continue to deny our relationship that if we would stick together everything would be okay.

Every relationship probably has at its inception a hundred things that you could pick on and divert you from it but the feeling is there. You figure out a way to make it work.

I still like the relationship part of any story. You don't want your character to figure everything out and then at the end of the day go home and eat soup from a can by herself.

I wasn't smart enough to read relationship books when I was coming up. I learned everything the hard way.

There's nothing worse than walking around and talking about your failed relationship all day every day for months on end.

I personally don't believe people really grow. They just learn stuff when they were a kid and hold on to it and that affects every relationship they have.