I feel incompetent to perform duties. . . which have been so unexpectedly thrown upon me.
I kept telling everyone I wasn't going to Washington to stay. I go to visit.
Sometimes it is better to begin the journey, to get under way, then it is to sit back and wait until such time that you're convinced that all conditions are perfect and that there'll be no surprises along the route.
All 50 states had the same national economy. And on virtually any measurement you wish to look at, Michigan has moved up and improved against the others.
You win by working hard, making tough decisions and building coalitions.
I just have a position that any child that's in a failing school should be able to get out, or be in a position to have that school fixed.
I had made a decision early on that we were going to do the right things and that if they worked we were going to be very successful. And if for some reason they didn't, all the claims and the protestations and the excuses wouldn't make any difference.
What I cannot forgive is dishonesty - and no matter what, or how hard, I would rather know the truth of which I today had such a clear & devastating vision from his mouth than hear foul evasions, blurrings and rattiness.
I hope Gunter Grass will continue helping the SPD in campaigns and that he will otherwise remain with us as a provocative literary figure, as well.
As one needs happiness so have I needed love; that is the deepest need of the human spirit. And as I love you utterly, so have you now become the whole world of my spirit. It is beside and beyond anything that you can ever do for me; it lies in what you are, dear love - to me so infinitely lovely that to be near you, to see you, hear you, is now the only happiness, the only life, I know.
I want the world to be better because I was here. I want my life, I want my work, my family, I want it to mean something and if you are not making someone else's life better then you are wasting your time.