Children are amazing, and while I go to places like Princeton and Harvard and Yale, and of course I teach at Columbia, NYU, and that's nice and I love students, but the most fun of all are the real little ones, the young ones.

In 1975 I was among a group of blacks who formed the Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee.

Well, I'm not sure, but of one thing I am certain: History judges one differently than contemporary observers, and so I think that as time passes, I hope that not me personally so much, but our administration will be seen for some of the things that we accomplished.

Well, I think I am a very, very lucky person. I'm very fortunate.

. . .little has changed in our New York neighborhoods except the faces, the names, and the languages spoken. The same decent values of hard work and accomplishment and service to city and nation still exist.

My mother came here to New York. She and my grandmother were domestics, cooking, cleaning for other people.

There is no point in me worrying about what Bloomberg or Badillo will do.