The book that really, really shaped my politics and has forever is Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon," which is a novel based on terrible fact about what it was like in Russia during Stalin's time when people actually believed that to get to the point where the Proletariat would triumph, anything that was necessary to be done should be done; the means didn't count.

[People] felt good even though they didn't really know much about [Barack Obama] and may have had some doubts.

I'd pick - my father would bring home about six newspapers. We had 10 in Boston at the time.

Even though the clock didn't work, we kept the clock because of how we felt about Franklin D. Roosevelt . A lot since then I knew about FDR I wouldn't have been so enthusiastic.

A woman in the audience asked [Barack] Obama about her mother. Her mother was 101 years old and was in need of a certain kind of procedure. Her doctor didn't want to do it because of her age. However, another doctor did and told this woman there is a joy of life in this person. The woman asked President Obama how he would deal with this sort of thing, and Obama said we cannot consider the joy of life in this situation. He said I would advise her to take a pain killer. That is the essence of the President of the United States.

In fact, we have never had more invasions of privacy than we have now [with Barack Obama].

I'm working on "Living the Bill of Rights," and it's about people - well, it starts with Brennan and Douglas as people who not only live the Bill of Rights, but try to shape the reason for that.