I didn't know folk music growing up no. It's something I've come to study really because I think there's so much to learn from traditional music in the sense of the way music began as a way of communication the traveling storyteller the bard the minstrels.

It's populated by people who by and large have terrific communication skills. Every day is an extraordinary day. For me it was just a great area for storytelling.

I never told a victim story about my imprisonment. Instead I told a transformation story - about how prison changed my outlook about how I saw that communication truth and trust are at the heart of power.

The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.

What creates freedom? A revolution in the streets? Mass protest? Civil war? A change of government? The ousting of the old guard and its replacement by the new? History more often than not shows that hopes raised by such events are often dashed sooner rather than later.

But I think it's more that when you're young you're invincible you're immortal - or at least you think you are. The possibilities are limitless you're inventing the future. Then you get older and suddenly you have a history. It's fixed. You can't change anything. I find that a bit disturbing to be honest.

Christians should be ready for a change because Jesus was the greatest changer in history.

There is at least one point in the history of any company when you have to change dramatically to rise to the next level of performance. Miss that moment - and you start to decline.

Never doubt that you can change history. You already have.

The biggest danger to the European Union comes not from those who advocate change but from those who denounce new thinking as heresy. In its long history Europe has experience of heretics who turned out to have a point.

You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall.

If you take different mythologies from different cultures the names may change and the story lines may vary but there is always something in common.

I don't think that a leader can control to any great extent his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

The future is not Big Government. Self-serving politicians. Powerful bureaucrats. This has been tried tested throughout history. The result has always been disaster. President Obama your agenda is not new. It's not change and it's not hope.

If I want to knock a story off the front page I just change my hairstyle.

The whole course of human history may depend on a change of heart in one solitary and even humble individual - for it is in the solitary mind and soul of the individual that the battle between good and evil is waged and ultimately won or lost.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself but each of us can work to change a small portion of events and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.

'Blind Curve ' the book I'm working on now sprang from a crazy incident that happened to me last year while on my book tour. I was pulled out of my car for a minor traffic violation - an incident that escalated into my being thrown into cuffs and told I was going to jail. Except in my story the hero doesn't get off as easily as I did.

Yeah I left Idaho at 17. You know I graduated high school a year early and just you know the typical story packed up my car and moved out.

In the history of the world no one has ever washed a rented car.