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The Achilles Heel of the Americas was the lack of cultural confidence typical of new settlers.

Well, pioneers always suffer. I don't care who is the first to embark upon things. For instance, settlers that settled the West, Western Canada and the U.S... they went though hell doing it, but it had to be done.

It did not come naturally; in fact, it would be difficult to conceive of any more dogmatic and less tolerant people than the first settlers on New England shores.

Australia and Canada were settled by adventurers, they had to break new ground. I think that is indelibly etched on our cultural spirit.

I always heard that immigrants had a really hard life when they came to America.

There is something inexpressibly sad in the thought of the children who crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and the fathers of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Boston, and the infancy of those born in the first years of colonial life in this strange new world.

For generations, people have come to U.S. shores to seek opportunity. It's what my grandfather did a century ago, when he came to Seattle, and worked as a houseboy just one mile from the Washington State governor's mansion that I was privileged to inhabit for eight years.

When I was five, we moved to Virginia and lived inside an old fort that was surrounded by a moat. So when I heard stories of American history, I felt as if those dramas were taking place right in my own backyard.

People, when they first come to America, whether as travelers or settlers, become aware of a new and agreeable feeling: that the whole country is their oyster.