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 make yourself available to the movement. At that point, for example, battered wives were not on the top of anybody's list. It was, "What did you do to provoke him? Why would he do that to you?" Stuff like that. I called the hotline, and I said I was available to help get orders of protection. I would help do whatever needed to be done, serve their papers. Many times, they'd go to court, get their papers, and then be afraid to serve them on the guy. So that was one source of income. But I took anything that came across my doorstep.

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 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.

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

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