We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well.
My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.
I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution.
I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens.
Lawyering is very individualistic. There are lawyers who are going to be that persistent birddog, they're never going to give up on the client, they're going to defend people.
The only way not to be afraid is to join with other people who are also afraid.
I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles. So I went to the school and, being a smart cookie - as they called us in those days - I had a million questions. How did this place exist? How come I didn't know about it? Why are people living like this? Do they want to live like this?
There's no doubt that the Donald Trump administration, part of the red meat that he ran on from the first day when he announced his candidacy was a very extreme anti-immigrant rhetoric that he kept up through the whole campaign - the wall, deportation, more detention. And I think that that particular piece of red meat, he's going to throw out every once in a while and try to - of all the commitments that he's made, this is the one that is most disturbing, because it's one that he will try to fulfill through his presidency.
Just as I had long suspected, a person didn't really need math for anything anyway. Maybe some people did. Some limited people.
To reach your potential you must grow. And to grow, you must be highly intentional about it.
I like character-driven stuff. It doesn't matter, the size of the part.