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

How could I have been the valedictorian, the smartest, and never known Harlem existed? As a result, I began a lifelong learning experience, because I could not accept what the party line was with education - that these people want to live like this, these people don't have ambition, they don't want to work. You know, all the usual bullshit.

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

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. So I went to the school and, being a smart cookie - as they called us in those days - I had a million questions. How did this place exist? How come I didn't know about it? Why are people living like this? Do they want to live like this?

The prosecution makes all the important decisions: what's charged, how much is charged, whether you can get a decent offer. Every defendant becomes an informant today.

I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens.

Lawyering is very individualistic. There are lawyers who are going to be that persistent birddog, they're never going to give up on the client, they're going to defend people.