It's difficult to get started-when it comes to dealing with an unknown quantity people are reluctant to trust their own opinion. It helps if two or three people give you a boost.

It takes years for me to trust I know that about myself. A lot of it is because I am so private and so reluctant to make myself vulnerable.

With respect to the respective French and German traditions you are no doubt correct although I am reluctant to see individual achievement reduced to archetypes.

Democracies are indeed slow to make war but once embarked upon a martial venture are equally slow to make peace and reluctant to make a tolerable rather than a vindictive peace.

As for leadership I am the kind who leads reluctantly and more by example than anything else. Someone had to be on the incorporation papers as president.

It is not when truth is dirty but when it is shallow that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

This president has been reluctant to hold anybody accountable. No one was held accountable after September the 11th. Nobody's been held accountable after the clear flaws in intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq.

You have spent many lives and much treasure to bring freedom to many lands that were reluctant to receive it. And here you have a people who won it by themselves and need only the help to preserve it.

It's very difficult to break into motion pictures but it's oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios are reluctant to finance.

It took me so many years to move out. I'm definitely a bit of a Peter Pan reluctant to grow up. It all seemed really nice at home-why change it? Part of me would prefer not to have any responsibility whatsoever.