Frederick Douglass ran a primary campaign against [Abraham Lincoln] the second time around, in 1864. They hated him. Why'd they hate him? Because he said things like "I believe in white supremacy."

Agitators, organizers, activists, intellectuals aren't bound by those rules. We're not trying to figure out, how do I thread this particular needle?

But the frat boys were all frivolous and idiotic in our minds now, a bunch of conformist fools going through the motions of hip.

Writing a memoir has a particularly excited sense of narcissism.

Certainly my parents were Dr. [Benjamin] Spock-driven parents. So they were tolerant.

[John] McCain seemed to be winking to the Right, and [Barack] Obama seemed to be winking to the Left. Neither one of them - if McCain had been elected we'd still be where we are on gay rights.

When [my dad] was at the University of Michigan, my mom was a social-worker. As he rose, he voted for [Adlai] Stevenson initially. Then he voted for [Dwight] Eisenhower. Then he kept voting Republican until he voted for Barack Obama. So that's kind of amazing. But he was offered a cabinet post by Eisenhower in his second term. So he was moderate Republican. But if you asked him, he would've said, "I don't have any politics. I'm a business person." Mainstream, the American view, as he understood it.