I’d edit out all my gauche incomprehension.

I should have known that I might not like what my brain scan showed, just as I should have known that the symptoms of prostatism that were increasingly bothering me were just as likely to be caused by cancer as by the benign prostatic enlargement that happens in most men as they age. But I continued to think that illness happened to patients and not to doctors, even though I was now retired. Twenty months after I had my brain scanned, I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. I had had typical symptoms for years, steadily getting worse, but it took me a long time before I could bring myself to ask for help. I thought I was being stoical when in reality I was being a coward. I simply couldn’t believe the diagnosis at first, so deeply ingrained was my denial.

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.

I would not let Nick Cassavetes direct My Sister’s Keeper, the film. He said [the ending] was going to match what was in the book, then changed it.

That I never became a virtuoso musician.

The best possible understanding of who they are and where they came from.

Kind, insubstantial and dedicated.

It feels like somebody giving you the keys to unlocking who you really are.

In 1992 I was in New York, and somebody showed me a work by Louise Bourgeois. I never realised that sculpture could move me, and I was so affected by this piece that I bought it. It was a lot of money.

Gabor Maté. He is very eloquent and articulate about the role of trauma in our lives.