Running for office is important, and you don't really need more than to be right on the issues, and to be able to articulate what it is you believe. You don't need a certain background. You don't need to be a lawyer. You don't need to have some professional degree.

When I got into politics, it was a shock. People promise all sorts of things and then never deliver.

If you run for mayor, people say you're being egotistical. If you decide you won't run for mayor, people say you're being self-centered and egotistical.

This idea that once you get into politics you are now signed up for lifelong duty being in elective office, makes a fundamental error - and that is believing that the only way you can hold progressive views and implement them is in elective office.

At some point the rhetoric runs out, and we have to ask ourselves, 'Are we simply going to standby while somebody's rhetoric is good, but their actions are so lousy?' Are we going to stand up for that?

I think a lot of politicians, rightfully so, understand that their political futures are tied to how many times people see their names in print. The press is so accustomed to politicians wanting those things, it's a surprise when somebody's like, 'Whatever, I'm not really worried about those things.

I think when judges are in the position of authority, they really get bent out of shape when someone tells them they acted inappropriately.