Just look at a Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa and Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela, and you’ll see that one of the outstanding characteristics of each one of these is how they have poured themselves out prodigally on behalf of others, of their being so utterly selfless.

My wife, Daniela. She is the bringer of joy and clarity, and she is very beautiful.

My mother. Any child of a single parent, if they are in a relationship when they become a parent, thinks, “How the hell did you do it alone?”

Chlöe Swarbrick who is co-leader of the New Zealand Greens. She’s demonstrating the bold leadership that I look to do every single day.

I was almost run over by a bus when I was 13. And in 1991, in the Gulf war, an Iraqi missile hit close to my house.

That I still don’t understand life. When I was young, I thought at some point I would find somebody who does. I am 45, and there is a good chance that I’ll never meet somebody like that.

When my dog died a couple of years ago. We were in Greece on vacation and a friend was watching her at home, and she was bitten by a snake. We rushed home, but we were too late by a few hours.

When I was 16, at the beginning of the summer vacation, I worked in a factory that made industrial valves and I was a much worse industrial valve producer than historian.

I would like to come out at 16 or 17, and not 21.

Now. I’ve learned to adjust my expectations to reality better than when I was 20 or 10.