We are a country of excess. So it's not the violence, per se, but the exacerbation and constant repetition.

I guess because the shows were activist in their own way - the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know - people understand me very well. They also understand there's a very strong bipartisan part in all of this.

When something is over, it is over.

We had two African American writers [Eric Monte and Michael Evans] on the show ['Good Times'] that knew Cabrini Green inside and out, and that's why we set it there.

That's a very hard thing to help the establishment know. We're still an establishment that thinks the average mentality is something like 13 years of age, that never forgot H.L. Mencken's notion that nobody lost money underestimating the intelligence of the American people. That's the horseshit the establishment has always lived with.

I don't know how you can look back with regret if you're at a moment when everything seems fine.

In my 90-plus years, I have lived a multitude of lives.