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

You know that question: What do you do when you think the client's guilty? The real question is: What you do when you think a client's innocent?

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.

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.

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.

I took anything that came across my doorstep. I started getting a reputation.

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.