“Most states in the union where the death penalty is theoretically on the books don’t have executions.”

You can’t have it all, all at once.

Prisons should be co-ed because separate quarters are discriminatory.

There is a Constitutional right to prostitution.

America is known as a country that welcomes people to its shores.

The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.

You’re saying, no, state said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim-milk marriage.

We belong to a group that historically has been the object of discrimination.

Work for what you believe in, but pick your battles, and don’t burn your bridges.

If you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

I don’t say women’s rights – I say the constitutional principle of the equal citizenship stature of men and women.

Reading is the key that opens doors to many good things in life. Reading shaped my dreams, and more reading helped me make my dreams come true.

My mother was very strong about my doing well in school and living up to my potential.”

Speak you mind even if your voice shakes.

The Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete.

Every girl and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.

I really like to look like a history book. I can look the 1940s, I can look 1970s hippie-chic, or sometimes I’ll pull that ’80s Brooklyn hip-hop kid with the door-knocker earrings.

So many books, so little time.

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Tell me how you read and I’ll tell you who you are.

Everything that I do is very autobiographical. I’m trying to be as much of an open book as possible and give the audience every single piece of me.

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

Books: our unfailing companions.