My success has been based on the issues. It's easy to fight for mental health or needle exchange or small businesses or whatever, because the machine can't interfere.

It's hard for me to write about anything personal because I get way too personal.

I think the book [Straight to the Heart: Political Cantos] has meaning for any large city with urban problems. There are political machines in a lot of large cities, and everywhere the goals of society get lost.

There's no question that I have always wanted to be mayor. I know I am strategically not supposed to be saying that, but I don't care.

When I think about political races, and certain consultants, the word that comes to mind is dirty. Dirty, dirty, DIRTY!

My progressive ideals are screaming in [Straight to the Heart: Political Cantos] book; what I believe. There is no muddying-up because of debate. You know exactly where I stand, because I put it down in the written word.

[After her 18-day disappearance in 1974:] I love my husband very, very much, but he didn't ask me when he ran for mayor and he didn't consult me about running for governor. It would be nice to be asked. ... You know, I've been my mother's daughter, my father's daughter, the wife of my husband, the mother of my six children, and grandmother to my eleven grandchildren, but I have never been me. But I am now because I went away. I am a changed woman.