What I do miss is foreign travel, because there really is no substitute for showing up somewhere and representing the United States.

Our basic assessment was that if America keeps going down these rabbit holes in the Middle East, we're just going to put ourselves out of business as the world leader because we're just draining resources and diplomatic bandwidth, and we're not producing outcomes.

In the Arab Spring, that obviously came to a head in Syria. I found myself arguing for intervention, mainly just because I wanted things to get better, and I had this germ of liberal humanitarian interventionism.

The Benghazi attack was one of the more confusing, chaotic days that we had at work because you had these multiple violent protests taking place in the Middle East.

When I first went to work in the West Wing, the most daunting thing was how small this place was... You walk in: it's three floors, and there's a few offices on each floor, and that's it.

The fact of the matter is the West Wing never gets fully renovated because nobody wants to vacate it. And so you have basically patch-up jobs that are being done, but it's a tight and cramped environment.

I was a relatively anonymous guy, and for whatever reason, I became one of the villains for the Right.

I had the Secret Service actually patrolling my block at some point. I didn't sign up for that. I went to work to write speeches for Barack Obama!

The events of my twenties felt historic, but the people involved did not. I wanted a hero - someone who could make sense of what was happening around me and in some way redeem it.

It was wrenching to read about the brutality of Assad every morning, to see images of family homes reduced to rubble. I felt we had to do something in Syria.

Billions of people around the globe had come to know Barack Obama, had heard his words, had watched his speeches, and, in some unknowable but irreducible way, had come to see the world as a place that could - in some incremental way - change.

As people who know me know, probably to a fault, I am usually not without thoughts and words.

The only place in the world where, I think, leaders have preferred Trump are in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia and Israel.

When I think of the things that Trump has done, ironically, everything is sort of - we care so much about Cuba and the Iran deal. I think pulling out of TPP is just devastating.

What's interesting about the foreign policy establishment critique is, you know, I think the Blob and I have more in common in some ways than people might think, but also, what I was saying can be misread.

If you are a speechwriter, you have to know what the person you're writing for thinks. A lot of foreign policy advisers are thinking, 'How can I get my proposal into this guy's speech?' I was just thinking, 'What does he want to say?'

Talking and diplomacy is often seen as a concession in America, in a way that it is not in other places.

Laos is the ghost of American military interventions past.

There are a very limited number of people in senior roles at the White House, and time is their most precious asset.

Mandela was a guy who didn't come in and just eviscerate the existing institutions. He sought to co-opt them. He brought white South Africans into his government.

'Make America great again,' is not that different from Putin's nostalgia for the Soviet Union or tsarist Russia.

One of the things you learn in government is there's a long tail to American decision-making when it comes to foreign policy. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem, pulling out of the Iran deal, pulling out of Paris, not speaking up for democratic values - the world doesn't end the next day.

The U.S.-Israel relationship is so important.

Living in a republic demands a great deal of us.

Among the responsibilities of each citizen in a participatory democracy is keeping ourselves sufficiently informed so that we can participate effectively, argue our positions honorably, and hopefully, forge sufficient consensus to understand each other and then to govern.

Democrats have bad ideas and Republicans have no ideas.

Nebraska Republicans believe that Nebraska Democrats love their kids, and I believe we can have a constructive conversation with everybody.

The people I like most are the people who are principled enough on both the right and the left to believe it is their duty to advocate, even though they may lose, and are not committed to their incumbency over the future of America.

Obamacare is a big deal to me. It's terrible legislation.

I believe zealously in conservative ideals, but Nebraskans want people who get things done, not just those who scream at each other.

I'm a right-wing conservative.

Keeping our agricultural sector strong and secure should be a bipartisan concern.

Farmers and ranchers need long-term certainty about who they will be able to sell to and under what terms.

Subsidies and bailouts cannot compensate for uncertain or permanently diminished market access.

The USMCA is a good deal for American agriculture.

Modern technology gives us surprising glimpses into human development. It helps us plan for and celebrate new life.

Abortion is emotional and difficult to discuss.

Planned Parenthood can't hide their sickening abortion business behind a 'safe, legal and rare' slogan.

In America, we divide federal power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches so that no one holds too much power. This is sixth-grade civics: Congress writes the laws; the president executes the laws; and the courts apply those laws fairly and dispassionately to cases.

Members of the Supreme Court have lifetime tenures because they're not supposed to do politics.

Congress is where Americans are supposed to have our big, messy political fights. That's because the people who make the laws need to be hired and fired by the people. Don't like the laws? Fire the lawmakers.

Courts do not make the law.

Government never adapts quickly to new challenges, but our slow-footedness on cyber is unparalleled.

Since arriving in Washington in January 2015, I have pushed for a strategic framework that clearly articulates how we'll tackle threats in cyberspace.

The nature and scope of security threats in the cyber era are four-dimensional compared to the early nuclear age.

There were giant scale barriers to becoming a nuclear power, whereas launching a cyberattack requires only some coding capability, a laptop and an Internet connection.

My grandma was a child of the Depression, and knew the tragedy of having her home outside Diller was destroyed by a tornado.

We must repeal Obamacare, but even more, we must replace the worldview that underlies and enabled it.

The first time I began to really think about politics was in fifth grade, during President Reagan's first term.

The American work ethic is, thankfully, still deeply engraved in rural Nebraska souls. This is who we are, and we here in Nebraska have far more to teach Washington, D.C. than Washington, D.C. has to teach us.