There was a huge movement that led up to [gay marriage legilization], and I played a small role in the great scheme of things. But it was really a privilege to get to do it.

I had a great deal of independence from the president and the White House during the entirety of my five years. And I'm not sure exactly what that is, but our friend, Walter Dellinger, has a theory about it, and I think he's probably right. And the theory starts with the fact that I worked in the White House for a year and a half before coming over to the position of SG. And because of that, when I was nominated, there was some chatter out there that, "Oh. They're putting a political hack in. This has never happened before."

Sometimes one of the justices, because they're, you know, they're brilliant lawyers themselves, can put the question in a particular way so that, even if you've prepared to talk about the topic, the question is put in such an excruciatingly difficult way that there's just no good way to handle it.

One thing I've experienced and I feel really grateful for now that I'm on my way out is that I felt that the justices gave that back to me. I really did. You know, of course, you can have some sharp exchanges. That's the nature of the thing, and that's fine. But really in the main I felt like the tone from them was, "Yeah. We may not agree with you, but we're going to have a discussion about this." And it did.

I do think it's true that a huge amount of the oversight that the White House engages in with respect to the Executive Branch is out of fear that somebody's going to do something crazy and drive the president off a cliff.

If people can live openly and be equal, then you have to have a pretty strong reason to say they can't get married.

I do think that the instant nature of the reaction now, I do think it has an effect, that people's instant reactions to things are valid and valuable. But they're not always right, and they're not always capturing the full reality.