You can't twist Al Sharpton's arm.

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.

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.

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.

I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.

Happy people produce. Bored people consume.

One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.

That's crudely put, but If we're not supposed to dance, Why all this music?

God transforms, so to speak, this air into words, into various sounds. He makes you understand these various sounds through the modifications by which you are affected.

It's like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you're making up the earth you're going to stand on.

If you think about basic science or coming up with new theories of mathematics, these are not the kinds of things which are necessarily a well-defined market to pay people.

When in doubt, ingest carbs.

These vessels are out of sight, out of mind. They are exempt from minimum-wage requirements, from Coast Guard inspections, OSHA regulations and other safety laws.

My poems are political in the deeper sense of the word. Political means to live in your time, to be a man of your time.