“Bob Rubin was opposed to signing the welfare bill. He’s not exactly what I call a flaming liberal.”

I sometimes joke, Paula, even paranoid people have enemies.

For all the things that make Chicago great, for all the things that make us proud to call ourselves Chicagoans, the violence that is happening corrodes our core. It is not the Chicago we know and love.

In the White House, you can be on the pitcher’s mound or you can be in the catcher’s position. Put points on the board. Show people you can govern. Deliver on what you said you were going to deliver on.

When it comes to federal elections law, Tom DeLay and his special-interest friends live by one set of rules, and everyone else lives by a very different set.

The American people want change. They want big ideas, big reform.

I do not believe the government has the right to investigate somebody’s private life.

You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.

We invoke the sacrifices of our fallen heroes in the abstract, but we seldom take time to thank them individually.

Rather than doing the kind of fact-checking that normally goes with a story, you ran with certain stories for not wanting to get beat. There’s a pressure that exists in your profession. I would be surprised in any honest exchange that you say that doesn’t exist.

No citizen is a second class citizen in the city of Chicago. If my children are treated one way, every child is treated the same way.

There are too many senior citizens and good residents in Chicago who are sick and tired of having to walk several blocks out of their way when they leave their homes just to avoid the gangs and drug dealers on the street corner.

In millions of encounters each year between the police and the public, it may be too much to expect that every officer will always get it right. But it is not too much to expect that we can put the right safeguards in place to hold officers accountable when they get it wrong.

I don’t want to go negative on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he didn’t pass an economic deal in the first 100 days. We have passed the largest Recovery Act in the history of the country.

Things happened there that I don’t think are the finest hours for anybody, whether it was a journalist, the legal system or, in that case of the political system, who would say that was an example of when Washington worked best.

Every policy officer is sworn to protect life, and, under the most extreme circumstances, to take life. It is a staggering responsibility that requires officers to make split second decisions.

I would like to run for the mayor of the city of Chicago. That has always been an aspiration of mine even when I was in the House of Representatives.

Love is the key we must turn, truth is the flame we must burn.

Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!

You have never loved me as I love you–never–never! Yours is not a passionate heart–your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite– not a woman!

So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame, Angels affect us often.

Love isn’t about when you first meet. It’s about the many, many years you spend together, when you’re trying to keep that flame burning.

Bright as does the morning star appear, Out of the east with flaming locks bedight, To tell the dawning day is drawing near.

Understanding created by the intellect cannot be acquired by means of the occult, only by the aid of the zodiac, bringing forth that small flame by whose light part of the future may be discerned.

A pair of bright eyes with a dozen glances suffice to subdue a man; to enslave him, and enflame him; to make him even forget; they dazzle him so that the past becomes straightway dim to him; and he so prizes them that he would give all his life to possess ’em.