“But as an amateur, the highest level you can box at is the Olympics. I did that at 18 and felt it was time to move on to other challenges as a professional.”

You work for it. You don’t have to massage it, so that it fits into the way it has to be. He’s just too vigorous a writer and the dialogue is too sparking to do anything other than inhabit it and give it as much truth as you can.

One of the big challenges for our party is to demonstrate to people that we have an agenda for economic prosperity and that we can be trusted with their money.

At times you have to fight. No way around it. At some point, every one of us is confronted with danger or injustice.

An obvious fact about negative feelings is often overlooked. They are caused by us, not by exterior happenings. An outside event presents the challenge, but we react to it. So we must attend to the way we take things, not to the things themselves.

It would appear that, on the level of individual nations and of international relations, the free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.

I prefer to have longevity. I like as great a variety as possible, hopefully to avoid getting stuck in one kind of character, having to do it over and over again.

I follow a dairy-free and gluten-free diet, which can be challenging in some places.

Most important, however, is the third avenue to meaning in life: even the helpless victim of a hopeless situation, facing a fate he cannot change, may rise above himself, may grow beyond himself, and by so doing change himself. He may turn a personal tragedy into a triumph.