And what this person told me was that what you need to do is that, when you go to the White House, always say in the back of your mind that this may be the last time I’m going there because I might have to tell this president something he doesn’t like.

My mother said — and I didn’t realize how well it works — when I’d bring a drawing to her, she said, “I don’t look at the drawing. I looked at the child, and if the child was excited, I got excited.” And then we could discuss it. Because we were bringing something that meant something to me as a child. And so she would join in my lassitude, or my excitement, or my frustration. She wasn’t a psychologist, but she did understand this simple matter. Also, it accomplishes the only thing that has any meaning to a little child. The only thing an adult can give a child is time. That’s all, there isn’t anything else. That’s the only thing they need, really, is time. If you give them time, you’ll have to be understanding of them and give them time.

My mother used to say to me a thing which, when I look back on it, wasn’t terribly logical. — and I had a pretty hearty appetite, but when I had had a large meal put in front of me, and even I couldn’t get through it, she would say, “Edmund, remember the starving millions in Asia.” Now what possible use my consuming it would do for the starving millions in Asia, I don’t really know, but the fact remains that I was brought up to think about the starving millions in Asia. That meant I had to clean my plate up and not waste it. Later on, I got more involved with the starving millions in Asia, perhaps in a slightly more practical way: helping some of them with schooling and hospitaling and even in agriculture.

There’s a few that are immediate, because he just drilled them into my head. One is “Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.” Try as hard as you want to market something, get a crowd. That’s what actually matters. Another one that he still says all the time is, “You’ve got a violin, I’ve got a barn. Let’s put on a show. Don’t overthink this, just go.

When I was a young boy, [my schoolteacher Julia Coleman] introduced me to Leo Tolstoy's novel, "War and Peace." She interpreted that powerful narrative as a reminder that the simple human attributes of goodness and truth can overcome great power. She also taught us that an individual is not swept along on a tide of inevitability but can influence even the greatest human events.

And my sister, whose name is Ruth Stapleton, was a famous evangelist. She wrote four or five books, and she would give lectures to 50,000 people at a time. She and I had a long walk in the woods on my farm, and she said, “Jimmy, quite often, when you have a blow to your pride and a horrible defeat, you can either give up, or you can look on it as a way that God opens to you to do different and even better things.”

I wish I sent one more helicopter to get the hostages and we would have rescued then and I - I would have been re-elected, but that may have - and that may have interfered with the foundation of the Carter Center. And if I had to choose between four more years and the Carter Center, I think I would choose the Carter Center.

My mother in that way I’ve described. My daddy taught me how much a man could do in dealing directly with a multiplicity of responsibilities. Outside my family, the main person, outside of my father, the main man who has had an influence on my life is Admiral Hyman Rickover. I was one of the two young officers in the program to build atomic submarines. There were two built: the Nautilus and the Sea Wolf. I was in charge of the crew that was helping to build the Sea Wolf and building the nuclear power plant that later became a prototype. Rickover was a man who demanded absolute excellence and total dedication from all those who worked under him. He demanded as much from himself. And so he set a standard of commitment and perfection in life that I had never experienced before. He really had a great impact on my life.

As far as the Carter Center's concerned, I would like to see guinea worm completely eradicated before -- before I die. I'd like for the last guinea worm to die before I do. ... I think right now, we have 11 cases. We started out with 3.6 million cases. And I think we have two cases in South Sudan and one case in Ethiopia and one case in Mali and seven cases in Chad. That's all the guinea worms in the world, and we know where all of them are. So obviously, that would be my top priority.

At first I - I felt that it was confined to my liver and that they had - the operation had completely removed it. And so I felt quite relieved. And then that same afternoon we had an MRI of my head and neck and it showed up that it was already in four places in my brain. So I would say that night and the next day, until I came back up to Emory, I just thought I had a few weeks left. But I was surprisingly at ease. You know, I've had a wonderful life. I've had thousands of friends and I've had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence. So I was surprisingly at ease, much more so than my wife was.