The People Of The Middle East Share

Once A Month I Play With A Chamber Music Quartet. I Play Almost No Solo Music Anymore Because I So Enjoy The Interaction. The Members Of My Quartet Have Become Some Of My Best Friends And So I Really Enjoy It Now In Ways That I Didn't Before.

When Somebody Underestimated Me, It Made Me Want To Prove Them Wrong.

What Surprised Me Was The Angst At Our Democracy. And I Understand It - I Teach At A University And Feel It In My Students - But What I've Tried To Say To People Is That We Have Amazing Institutions, But Nobody Ever Said We Were Perfect. We Struggled Before And We're Struggling Now, And We're Going To Struggle Every Day. We're A Work In Progress. That's Why The American Experience Is So Important For Us To Remember, And For Us To Be A Beacon For Others To Enjoy Those Same Rights.

For 60 Years, My Country, The United States, Pursued Stability At The Expense Of Democracy In This Region, Here In The Middle East, And We Achieved Neither.

I Wish That After The War Against Saddam Hussein We Had Been More Effective At Rebuilding Iraq Quickly. I Think Had We Done It From The Provinces, In, Rather Than From Baghdad, Out, We Might Have Been More Successful.