Today, certain people file for bankruptcy, businesses and individuals, and it no longer has the stigma it once had. Now it's almost considered wise, a way to regroup and come back again.

The art and culture that is New York, communications, finance, all these things help make up New York. The rest of the country should be happy that we are what we are.

I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.

I went to Israel when the missiles were falling there.

I love kids and I maintain that they are our future, that we adults owe them the ability to achieve their potential and that we don't own this planet. We hold it in trust for them.

But I make the observation that no one of us would do things exactly alike.

Well, I think I am a very, very lucky person. I'm very fortunate.

But the courts have dismissed the lawsuits against me and Lee Brown.

In 1975 I was among a group of blacks who formed the Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee.

As a matter of fact, even when I finished law school, I had no notion of public service then.

My mother came here to New York. She and my grandmother were domestics, cooking, cleaning for other people.

Military people never seem to apologize for killing each other yet novelists feel ashamed for writing some nice inert paper book that is not certain to be read by anybody.

What's wrong with people is people. There's no cure for that.

Let us cherish the hope that the day is not far distant when we will be in the midst of this next adventure.

There is little evidence that our individual intelligence has improved through recorded history.

They say never trust a skinny chef, but the fact is, to stay healthy when you're a chef means you have to work twice as hard.

My dad gave me my first bike at 16. I soon fell off and was in a wheelchair for weeks. I haven't fallen since.

Hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. It is about getting better inside about what is going on outside.

New Yorkers are so impersonal, if it wasn't for muggings there wouldn't be any contact at all!

I've been doing these conventions for 20 years, and we used to at least have debates about issues. Nothing is happening basically at this convention, other than speeches.