I have an addiction to caffeine.

When you go into a college of education you've got aspirations of making a difference in people's lives, of loving children, of working with kids, but none of that is affirmed in your college of education. Then you go working in schools, especially in places like New York City and Chicago that I'm most familiar with, and you find these huge aspirations are beaten out of you in a very systematic way - and still people persevere.

I didn't kill innocent people.

When someone who's always been in your life is gone, it's a stunning adjustment of your own identity.

I knew Barack Obama, absolutely. And I knew him probably as well as thousands of other Chicagoans.

Large numbers of people are broken from the notion that the system is working for people, that the system is just or humane or peaceful.

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.