My parents raised me and my six siblings with little money... but lots of love.

My niece was a sexual-assault victim. My sister is a survivor of domestic violence. We have more shelters for animals than for battered women. That's not the message we should be sending.

No family should have to depend on the labor of its children to put food on the table and no person should be forced to work in captivity.

My role was to bring about fairness in the workplace. All I did was implement the laws that were currently on the books.

In my teens, I worked as an aide in my community supervising and mentoring youth in various programs and delivering lunches to needy students.

No one has the right to threaten the health, education, and well-being of children by involving them in illegal or inappropriate work.

People have to be reminded that unions played a very historic role in our economy.

My father was a member of the Teamsters Union in California, where he helped to organize better health care for workers. My mother worked for more than 20 years on an assembly line.

There's two kinds of women--those you write poems about and those you don't.

Joy is based on the spiritual knowledge that, while the world in which we live is shrouded in darkness, God has overcome the world.

I always say my biological clock must be digital, because I've never heard it ticking.

Peace is the first thing the angels sang.

I need eight hours to get maybe 20 minutes of work done. I had one of those yesterday: seven hours of self-loathing.

We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything.

To wonder where the mind goes after the brain decays is as silly as asking where the 70-miles-per-hour have gone after a speeding auto has crashed into a tree.

When you don't know where you're at, you don't get upset you're not somewhere else.

Spring is a true reconstructionist.

I'm particularly committed to the political people who needed defense. I understand that they're fighting a bigger war than just, "Let me go get some money for cocaine tonight."