As a matter of fact, even when I finished law school, I had no notion of public service then.

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.

Well, I was about six or seven, and my mother and father separated.

So it's a mistake for someone to think that they bailed New York out. They did assist us, for which we are grateful, but it's a mistake to say we bailed New York out by giving them a grant of money to help those poor people who throw it away on welfare.

The people really are what make New York City great.

I love kids and I maintain that they are our future, that we adults owe them the ability to achieve their potential and that we don't own this planet. We hold it in trust for them.

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