I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.

I voted for Obama and I was delighted that he's been elected.

Nothing is more boring than some old person going on and on about the way things used to be.

Even there, [Barack] Obama's generals, his Pentagon, they're telling him what to do. And the force for gay rights is inevitable. And you can say Obama will help us, and maybe he will, but only if we have something on the ground that will make him help us. Frankly, the gay movement on the ground has been one of the great propulsive things that has made politicians do what they do.

That's in the nature of social change. So you can analyze what didn't work, but it's very hard to predict what will work.

I was a kid and I studied when I had to [live].

All that means to me is that people who have a vision of a better world have a responsibility to open their eyes, to pay attention, to act on what the moment demands, and to be humble about that action.