My great aunt was probably the greatest influence in my life. She was crippled. She never walked in her life. She crawled over the floor all her life. When my mother had to go out into the fields when we were smaller children, and then later go to California, she left us with my aunt, and my aunt could do everything except walk. She cooked the food for us, would bring everything to the stove. We had an old wood-burning stove. She cooked the food for us. She washed our clothes on this old washboard. We had to bring all the stuff there, the water, the soap, the washboard itself. She also disciplined us. So we had to break our own switch to get our punishment if we did something wrong. So we’d go out and break our own switch and come back and take our punishment.

Yes. I had a couple of great, great teachers. The teacher who changed my life was my journalism teacher, whose name was Charles Simms. I always tell this story. I love it. I had already decided that I was going to be a journalist. I didn’t know why exactly, except that I had seen a lot of Superman comics. Lois Lane and all of those major literary characters like that, but Mr. Simms got up the first day of class, and he went to the blackboard, and he wrote “Who, what, where, why, when, and how,” which are the six things that have to be in the lead of any newspaper story. Then he did what most journalism teachers do, which is that he dictated a set of facts to us, and then we were all meant to write the lead that was supposed to have “who, what, where, why, when, and how” in it. He dictated a set of facts that went something like, “The principal of Beverly Hills High School announced today that the faculty of the high school will travel to Sacramento, Thursday, for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Speaking there will be Margaret Mead, the anthropologist, and two other people.” So we all sat down at our typewriters, and we all kind of inverted that and wrote, “Margaret Mead and X and Y will address the faculty in Sacramento, Thursday, at a colloquium on new teaching methods, the principal announced today.” Something like that. We were very proud of ourselves, and we gave it to Mr. Simms, and he just riffled through them and tore them into tiny bits and threw them in the trash, and he said, “The lead to this story is: There will be no school Thursday!” and it was this great epiphany moment for me. It was this, “Oh my God, it is about the point! It is about figuring out what the point is.” And I just fell in love with journalism at that moment. I just fell in love with the idea that underneath, if you sifted through enough facts, you could get to the point, and you had to get to the point. You could not miss the point. That would be bad. So he really kind of gave that little shift of mind a major push.

In my early years it was undoubtedly my father. My father was director of a sanatorium for pulmonary tuberculosis, and at that time there were no antibiotics, tuberculosis was a terrible disease. And, he and I would walk in the woods around that sanatorium and he would discuss his worries about his patients. And from him, I certainly inherited this extreme concern about the well-being of patients. I’ve seen him very happy when he succeeded after months and months of rest and other things to have these people go home cured. I’ve also seen him crying and desperate after trying for a long time and a patient did not get well, and went home to die.

I had really good teachers in high school. Probably I connected the best with an English teacher that I had my junior year in high school, Miss Sanchez, Jan Sanchez — God bless her. I’m still in touch with her, had lunch a couple of years ago, and we email each other and still exchange, recommend books to each other: “What novel are you reading lately? I read this book — you want to read this.” That kind of thing. But she really was the first time — I remember it was in her class that I read The Grapes of Wrath , which was the first time I had read a novel in English where I felt like I got it at the time. I had the, I felt really connected to the writer and to the story. I told her how much I loved that book and what it meant to me, and I think I saw part of my own family, and a lot of the Afghans in that story — people who would, they become uprooted and homeless and kind of drifting around trying to find a new home. So Jan Sanchez was probably my favorite teacher in high school, and although I never shared with her any of my writing, she came to one of my book readings as a surprise. I hadn’t seen her in over two decades, and she showed up, and she goes, “Remember me?” Obviously, I knew immediately who she was, and it made me so proud that she had read my book and she had loved it. I felt like I had done good. You know, when your teacher comes up to you, even if you are middle-aged and have your own family, having your teacher come up to you and pat you on the back is still a pretty special feeling.

Could I imagine a world without cursing? Hell, no! Every place I've ever gone, people have had to hold their ears.

there was no way I could have accomplished the bin Laden operation without the help of Special Forces

There is a dignity associated with people, no matter where the hell they come from — whether they come from Italy or Ireland or Germany or Asia or Africa.

I think what we’re trying to do at the Panetta Institute is to try to get all young people to understand that they have a duty to give back to our country in some capacity.

But if our institutions of democracy are not working, that is an even greater threat to our national security

And I never forgot what he said, Bill Clinton. He looked at me, and he said, “You know, Leon, you can be the greatest OMB director in the history of the world, but nobody’s going to remember you if the White House has fallen apart!” I never forgot that.