ou know, if you’re going to keep looking at me and i’m going to keep looking back, we should at least know each other. i’m hillary rodham.” and he told me his name, he tells people that he couldn’t remember his name. but it was an immediate attraction and it was just a life-changing experience to have met him.

from day one.

from day one.

you were young, you were smart, you had a future in washington. but you gave it up to be with bill clinton to move to arkansas where you had no friends, no family, no traditional roots there in any way. and one of your best friends said, why on earth would you throw away your future?

you know, i’ve had to at so many points in my life listen really hard to my own feelings. sometimes my family and my friends have said “do this” or “do that” or “don’t do this” i just knew that i had to take that step -- so i followed my heart and i went to arkansas.

senator, i have to go back now to perhaps the most difficult time of your life and it is something that you write about very frankly. wednesday january 21st, 1998, you write that your husband woke you up, sat on the edge of the bed and gave you some troubling news. what did he tell you?

well, he told me there was going to be a newspaper article that 6)alleged that he had some kind of a relationship with a young woman, and he said he was very 7)upset about the article and he wanted me to know before i got up and read it in the paper myself. and he told me it wasn’t true.

did you believe him?

i did believe him. you know, by that time, barbara, so many 8)accusations have been made about me that were just extraordinary, outrageous accusations and i knew they weren’t true, and i knew that for whatever reason people felt 9)obligated or compelled to make them, and so it didn’t seem unusual to me that something like this would be said.

then on saturday, august 15th, just as he had done before, your husband woke you up. this time he had something different to say.

that was probably the worst moment that i can even imagine anyone going through, because what he told me that morning was that he had not 10)levelled with me or anyone else, he had not told me the whole truth about what the relationship was. and i was, i was 11)furious, i was dumbfounded, i was, you know, just beside myself with anger and disappointment. and you know, i couldn’t imagine how he could have done that to me or to anyone else. and that’s what i basically told him on that long ago morning now.

what did your husband say? how did he explain it?

he just kept saying that he was very sorry over and over again. and i could tell that he was, but that wasn’t much comfort. i was still furious and stayed furious for quite some time. but he just kept saying over and over again, you know: i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i’m sorry.

at one point, you described what your husband had done as a sin of weakness.

it clearly was. you know, a friend, who is something of a 12)theologian, said to me during this period that there were two kinds of sins: sins of weakness and sins of 13)malice. and i think that my husband has so many strengths and is such a 14)fundamentally good person with a good heart. it was a question for me whether this particular wrongdoing or sin was something that we could work through together.

but was there a day, was there a time when you said, “i forgive him, this marriage will go on”?

yes, yes, it took a long time. but i reached the point where i decided that i was either going to have to forgive and let go of the anger and the disappointment that i had felt, or we weren’t going to have a marriage. and both of us worked very, very hard to reach that point.

what did your husband say when you told him, it’s ok we’re going to go on?

he was very 15)relieved and grateful because that is what he’s been asking for and it was something that we, you know, had to work toward. i didn’t just wake up one day and decide, it took quite some time.

ok, i have to ask it, what if he does something in the future that is similar?

you know, that will be between us and that will be that 16)zone of 17)privacy that i believe in, but right now i’m very hopeful and very committed to our marriage and our relationship.

there is the big question, what people most want to know and it’s this: how could you stay in this marriage? there is something in your book on page 75 that i thought answered the question.

“i’m often asked why bill and i have stayed together. all i know is that no one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way bill does. even after all these years, he is still the most interesting, 18)energizing and fully alive person i have ever met. bill clinton and i started a conversation in the spring of 1971, and more than 30 years later, we’re still talking. “

希拉里·克林顿的心路历程

你念完韦尔斯利学院后，入读耶鲁大学法学院，成为235名学生仅有的27名女生之一。你说，当时比尔·克林顿是很难不被注意到的。为什么他会很难不被注意？他的外表怎样？

这个啊，他当时看起来像个北欧海盗。长着浓密、棕红色的大胡子，头发是浅红色的，他真让人过目难忘。他是来自阿肯