After I became a citizen I felt freer to say what I thought about this country both negative and positive. I think I had been consciously and subconsciously biting my tongue in the past.

George W. Bush brought a lot of minorities into his administration which was a positive thing and they had some issues that they wanted to press but 9/11 really gave them direction. It gave them a purpose.

My Botswana books are positive and I've never really sought to deny that. They are positive. They present a very positive picture of the country. And I think that that is perfectly defensible given that there is so much written about Africa which is entirely negative.

Sometimes you're not even sure which of your stories were failures. There are things I've written that I thought were complete catastrophes when I finished with them that have gone on to generate some of my most positive feedback.

If you think of a work of fiction as a kind of scale model of the world then the positive valences - where things turn out better than you thought they would - ought to be in there somewhere too.

You should tell yourself frequently 'I will only react to constructive suggestions.' This gives you positive ammunition against your own negative thoughts and those of others.

You must not under any pretense allow your mind to dwell on any thought that is not positive constructive optimistic kind.

It takes but one positive thought when given a chance to survive and thrive to overpower an entire army of negative thoughts.

Once you replace negative thoughts with positive ones you'll start having positive results.

As I've gotten older I've gotten more liberal and my father is increasingly conservative. It's so shocking to me because I always thought we had the same politics. The day I realized we voted for different presidents I practically fell out of my chair.

I kept a steel wall around my moral and sexual instincts - protecting them I thought from the threats of the real world. This gave me a tremendous advantage in politics if not in my soul. The true me my spiritual core slipped further and further from reach.

Look there ought to be politics in politics.

When I came into politics I always thought there was a possibility I would be killed.

Idealism is the despot of thought just as politics is the despot of will.

As women have played an increasingly important role in politics there is no question that they've brought a different perspective focusing attention on a broader set of issues and building alliances with other women.

The world of politics is always twenty years behind the world of thought.

I never thought of politics as a profession.

To those who have exhausted politics nothing remains but abstract thought.

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.

I always voted at my party's call and I never thought of thinking for myself at all.

It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent thoughtful schoolchildren.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry - which was very personal and cathartic at the time- was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul.

I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.