There's always to me a universality - one of the things I learned early on as a journalist and a writer is that there's a universality in specifics. The more specific you get, the more universal it can be.

I always felt like I had the word "illegal" tattooed on my forehead.

You have to stand for something bigger than yourself.

I have no control over what people call me. The only thing I have control over is my work, and that's really all I can be judged on.

The immigration bill is going to pass. We're going to have a bill. It's going to get through the Senate. I think the fundamentals are there and the foundation is strong and the bill is going to happen. The House is going to be trickier, but I think it's going to happen there too.

We're talking about America - a country that's been built on the back of cheap labor. That's addicted to cheap labor. Talk to the Chinese and Irish who built the railroads. Talk to the black people who built the South. So what is the US-Mexico conversation really about?

When you watch the way some of the commentators talk about this, it makes it seem as if people are crossing the border every second. How much money have we spent on the border? Why? And who's really exploiting whom?" And then he gets quiet. But I think just airing these out and having a face-to-face conversation about it helps both of us internalize what the conversation is really about. I don't think we have that in the public sphere.