I'm still very connected to my family, to the world I grew up in. I understand what it means to be afraid that you can't pay a doctor's bill. Or to have to make the choice between buying a band uniform for a seventh-grader and making the insurance payment on time. That will never leave me. It was how I lived until I was well into my adult years.

My daddy's response [to fear of being poor] was to never talk about money or what might happen if it ran out.

My mother said, if you don't have the cash, don't buy it. And on that, my mother was right.

If you don't have a seat at the table, you're probably on the menu.

No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people. People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die. And that matters. That matters because we don't run this country for corporations, we run it for people.

If you want to find out how strong a company's ethics are, don't listen to what its people say, watch what they do.

The poor pay more, and that's one of the reasons people get trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.