I've pretty much always used my positions as a bully pulpit. What that means is strongly advocating for the things I feel are really important. Gun violence, to me, is the highest-priority public-health issue, and I have to make sure Congress is aware of it, the American people are aware of it, the president is aware of it, and that we all begin together to develop policies to exterminate the disease - the epidemic, really - of gun violence.

Once I had a professor say to me, "You know you have as much education as a lot of white people." I answered, "Doctor, I have more education than most white people."

If you can't control your reproduction, you can't control your life.

Judge Thomas was a man who had used the system to get where he wanted to be, but then felt that everyone else should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Who is the NRA anyway? They are usually middle-income people who only think of themselves, who want to have no government, really, except self-rule by themselves. I think that little cracks are starting to emerge in the NRA armor.

We've tried ignorance for a thousand years. It's time we try education.

My biggest challenge is to educate the American people, to make access to health care available for all, and to make sure that prevention plays a big part in health care. In the case of guns, prevention means we prevent homicides and devastating, expensive gun injuries by preventing those who shouldn't have guns from getting their hands on guns.