Bad things do happen in the world, like war, natural disasters, disease. But out of those situations always arise stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

If you don't take your clothes seriously, why should your viewers take you seriously?

Everyday I meet folks who show me how to look at challenges differently.

If you're really invested in feeling bad about the world, there are a lot of media outlets out there that you can turn to.

It's important to be informed but I also think it's important to be inspired. I'm creating a space where people can be inspired.

Talking doom and gloom all day no longer fit who I was as a person.

Your mind simply can't focus forward and downward all at the same time.

I think it's particularly fun not being a full-time showbiz reporter because you still have the 'Oh, wow!' factor when you go out on the red carpet and there are these big stars that are standing there. But if you're doing this day in and day out, it becomes a little blase.

I think most people live in a space where they are looking for meaning in life and good in the world and that is not necessarily reflected in straight news coverage right now.

My two must-haves are my cell phone and my MacBook Pro laptop, which allows me to update my Web site from wherever I am, whether I'm in Africa or in Sun Valley skiing.

There are few people who define the word, 'rock star' better than U2's Bono. He's revered the world over not just for leading one of the biggest bands ever, but for his very public work on behalf of the underprivileged in Africa.

Times might be tough, your head and thoughts might be spinning, but I find it's physically impossible to do that spiral thing when your mind is focused on giving and creating opportunity.

You have to liberate yourself first from the prejudices of the world in which you live.

From the time I was a little boy I found myself reading history when I had a choice. I read a lot of things, but history had a special appeal for me.

History had its own way of explaining things. The way historians explain things is by telling a story.

Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

All comparisons between America's current place in the world and anything legitimately called an empire in the past reveal ignorance and confusion about any reasonable meaning of the concept empire, especially the comparison with the Roman Empire.

I can see that you are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a different time: What's the same and what's different?

Throughout the human experience people have read history because they felt that it was a pleasure and that it was in some way instructive. The profession of professor of history has taken it in a very different direction.

We, to some degree, are like what we are because we inherited certain things from the Greeks and the Romans. One of them that's so striking is the whole area of politics.