That [race] is still part of what [Barack Obama] is riding on. Except that, too, is diminishing.

At the time there was a hospital strike in New York and the Catholic hospitals were part of a general consortium, and the head of the consortium had decided that they were finally going to replace some of the striking workers. And I hear [John] O'Connor yelling, `Over my dead body will you replace any of those workers! They have a right to strike.' So I figured, `This is interesting.'

I once did a - the first piece on Malcolm X that anyone had ever seen in the - white press.

Sandra Day O'Connor - once she said that there are - there were no public schools in America until the 18th century, and she overlooked my alma mater because we started - I say we - in 1635. And among the people who went there - and they're on - the walls in the auditorium, the names are: Ralph Waldo Emerson and Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, except he split when he was 10 years old to go to work.

A particular moment - and I'm not, to this day, quite sure how I feel about it - I had always wanted to be in the law books - you know, Hentoff vs. something or other.

Miranda [Hentoff] is a complete musician. She's a composer, a singer. She writes scripts along - with her projects. And she's a superb teacher. Her teaching pupils have ranged from Itzhak Perlman to Sting.

The person who has the strong ownership of free speech is the one who owns the press.