Quotes from SC gov’s wide-ranging AP interview

Quotes from Mark Sanford’s wide-ranging interview with The Associated Press, conducted in his Statehouse office over two days:

— On his political demise: “The problem with funerals is that someone has to die or something has to die. Obviously I’ve been dealing over the last couple of days with my own political funeral, if you will, in terms of other prospects that might or might not have come.”

— On other women he encountered on trips outside the U.S. but before he met his Argentine lover, Maria Belen Chapur, with whom he said he crossed a line he hadn’t crossed before: “What I would say is that I’ve never had sex with another woman. Have I done stupid? I have. You know you meet someone. You dance with them. You go to a place where you probably shouldn’t have gone … If you’re a married guy at the end of the day you shouldn’t be dancing with somebody else. So anyway without wandering into that field we’ll just say that I let my guard down in all senses of the word without ever crossing the line that I crossed with this situation.”

— On meeting Chapur for coffee during the Republican National Convention in New York in 2004: “I remember there was an older couple sitting to our right, and I remember them watching us, in the way that we interacted. They could see a spark, or, I don’t know what you’d call it, but there was something there.”

— On reconciling his affair while people were talking about him as a possible 2012 presidential candidate: “You kept compartmentalizing. That one is incredibly important in terms of the ramifications. And my passion for the world of ideas that impact this country and state. Um, the other was tied to, well what’s different between left brain and right brain, is what it is. One was about these different concrete things I’ve been working on. And the other, the other is tied to (long pause) the pursuit of happiness. Whatever that is.

— On his most recent trip to see Chapur in Argentina: “No, she knew I was coming. Didn’t believe I was coming, but I got down on one knee and said I am here in the hope that we can prove this whole thing to be a mirage.”

— On weighing his political career against his relationship with her: “I will be able to die knowing that I had met my soul mate. But it was one of those things, I knew the cost.”

— On his relationship with Chapur: “This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, that it’s a love story … a forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”

— On trying to deal with his feelings for her: “It’s about incredibly deep conflicts, between one’s heart and one’s value system, and an 8 ½ year wrestling match on that front.”

— On the affair: “Everyone of us is going to be at that death bed one day and we’re going to look back over the whole of our lives and we’re going to ask, you know, was or what we’re willing to risk certain things that may be viewed as a stupid trade-off by the rest of the world but that’s for each person to determine. And so if you end up 50 years here on earth and you know, alright, maybe I get another 30 and if you come into connection with a soul that touches yours in a way that no one’s ever has, even if it’s a place you can’t go, this notion of knowing that you know, for me, became very important.”