Oftentimes, when I was reporting on conflict somewhere in the world or prison or wherever I might be, I'd be struck by the fact that religious beliefs were sometimes transformative, sometimes a motivation for violence.

I was a very religious teenager, and I moved away from that.

People love to talk about the things that are important to them, but oftentimes as a journalist, if you're entering a world that's pretty esoteric and difficult to penetrate and has many barriers to outsiders, then the people inside that world just don't have the same language as you do.

When you're first starting on a project, you feel shy because you don't know very much, and you know that you're going to be ignorant and seem ignorant.

This age of terror will end one day, but whether our society can restore the feeling of freedom that once was our birthright is hard to predict.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S. and coalition partners stands as one of the greatest blunders in American history. The Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, rose out of the the chaos, throwing the region into turmoil that hasn't been equaled since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

In places where money comes out of the ground, luck and a willingness to take risks are the main denominators that determine one's future, not talent or education or hard work. Money that is so easily acquired somehow comes to seem well deserved, because those who have it must be either uniquely perspicacious or divinely favored.

Societies that depend on natural resources tend to have certain inherent problems. The limited concentration of wealth - whether from oil, coal, diamonds, or bauxite - often leads to corruption and authoritarianism.

What I've learned is that everybody really wants to sell their story. No matter who they are, everybody feels that what they're doing is the right thing, and if they could only explain themselves to a reasonable person that understands them, then maybe they'll listen.

I spent two years in Cairo, and I felt a certain urgency about trying to understand the region and the conflict here, in the modest way that a journalist might be able to try and shed some understanding and enlightenment on a region that is profoundly conflicted, and a conflict that has real consequences for Americans.