A combination of working in politics as well as teaching and being [an actor] certainly helped. I became so much more comfortable in front of a crowd. I felt like I was calling on all those other experiences.

My current goal is to change the way we think about antitrust and anti-monopoly.

I don't have any particular plans in mind. What I see is that you can become so focused on the idea of running that winning becomes your motivation, as opposed to what you stand for being your motivation.

I feel much more comfortable in politics than I did in book writing. Book writing is so hard. Politics felt easy compared to that.

I think about people and events in terms of archetypes a lot.

A lot of politics plays at the level of myth, and if you understand that, then you feel like you have access to the secret language of politics.

Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country.