Writing a memoir has a particularly excited sense of narcissism.

I mean the prime case that you can look at is Martin Luther King, who was only an activist for 13 years. But every year, he became deeper, more concerned, connecting more issues.

You cannot live a political life, you cannot live a moral life if you're not willing to open your eyes and see the world more clearly. See some of the injustice that's going on. Try to make yourself aware of what's happening in the world. And when you are aware, you have a responsibility to act.

There was a sense of palpable relief that George [W.] Bush was leaving and that the Republicans had slipped back and that was a wonderful feeling.

My brother and I met several times during that weekend trying to figure out what we were each going to do, and we met for breakfast the morning of the sit-in and I had decided that I was going to go get arrested, and he decided that he was going to have the harder job and go tell our parents that I'd been arrested.

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.

The idea that you live your life in phases - I've never bought that. I feel like I'm the same person who sat in at the draft board in 1965, I'm the same person who joined a fraternity, I'm the same person who got an MFA at Bennington, and I'm the same person who founded Weather Underground. My values are still intact.