You've got to learn to handle the press because god knows the government does all the time.

I think people are afraid. I remember when we'd have discussions in the '60s among people who were active. We'd say, "Well, people are afraid," and the answer to us was, "If you're afraid, you know you should be doing something." People are afraid today, but they're not doing anything.

I got a job as a children's librarian at PS 175 in Harlem, and that changed everything. That was an epiphany. I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles.

I spoke in front of a huge gathering in Seattle, and someone got up and said, "I'm just so afraid." I said, "The only way not to be afraid is to join with other people who are also afraid."

I couldn't add my talent, which is prodigious, to a defense of someone even accused of hurting a child.

If you make a mistake as a prosecutor, your mistakes go home, whereas if you make a mistake defending, they go to jail.

Your goal is to make a better world through the work you do. It's not always possible, and you have to earn a living.