I would say for the young: Don't be straight jacketed by ideology. Don't be driven by a structure of ideas.

What was on the agenda was school and social life and those kinds of things. So I was the middle of five kids. So I had the great advantage of being able to play up to the older kids and play down to the younger kids and I think that's part of what propelled me to become a teacher at some point in my life. But it was a comfortable childhood. It was a privileged childhood.

Being an activist and an artist - those two things should go together. You should allow the artistic sensibility to control some of your activism, but never should it be allowed to paralyze you.

I'm different in the sense that every minute of every day, I change. I'm thinking. But the basic principles that have powered me forward are still there. They're not different.

One of the great crimes of the Bloomberg/Klein administration [in New York City] is that they've removed themselves from communities, as if communities have nothing to say about what their needs and aspirations are for themselves and for their children.

What were the politics of my family? They were mainstream moderate politics.

I proposed a law that every country where the U.S. has a military base - those people should be allowed to vote in the American election.