Even if you're drawing a cartoon and exaggerating, you want to capture something true about the person.

Americans rightly, but sometimes excessively, celebrate every person in uniform as a hero, but seldom honor the difficult and often dangerous work being done day after day by members of our diplomatic corps. Warriors capture the popular imagination more easily than peacemakers.

I am no technophobe. I like being able to calibrate communication, depending on the situation - texting for the simple and immediate; email for business or when I want to put some lag time into the exchange; Twitter to promote something; Facebook to draw a crowd.

Books can capture injustices in a way that stays with you and makes you want to do something about them. That's why they are so powerful.

When something isn't done, you want to do something about it.

If you bill something as a memoir, you're implying that everything in it is true.