To believe my eyes and not my ears.

Now, what did I learn from it? I learned that there were people, mostly in the other party, who believe in free trade but didn’t really believe in doing anything for people who lost jobs. That is, every trade deal produces winners and losers, so this was going to work for us in a lot of ways because the Mexicans had much higher tariffs than we did. And because, if you’re a wealthy country, the jobs trade creates pay above the average wage, and often the jobs that are lost pay below. But it’s always assumed that all those people will be retrained and that there will be incentives to invest within driving distance of where they live to create new jobs. And we lost the Congress in ‘94, and I couldn’t get the money, and there was no interest in it until my last year as president when we passed something called the New Markets Initiative. So if I had it to do again, I’d get the money on the front end, and I’d say, “No, no, no, no. I need more money to help the people who will lose the jobs.” I just assumed, I think probably because I had — the Congress was the majority of our party, and also because the people that were for NAFTA, I couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t want to help the people that wouldn’t be winners.

We are not here for long – try not to take everything too seriously.

You can only do one thing at a time.

A Dalí painting.

On a train journey to Arcadia many years ago while making a TV documentary.

Looking after the flowerbed on my windowsill.

“You don’t stand a chance of succeeding as a writer in this country. The demographics are against you.” They were wrong. The only demographic that counts is the human heart.

Alchemy. Love. Resilience.

Not being there for my daughter.