What motivated me? My mother. My mother was an immigrant woman a peasant woman struggled all her life worked in the garment center.

The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.

If men and women are to understand each other to enter into each other's nature with mutual sympathy and to become capable of genuine comradeship the foundation must be laid in youth.

Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.

Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve center of his consent to a purpose or cause a movement or an ideal which may be more important to him than whether he lives or dies.

I spent some time at White Memorial Medical Center as a senior medical student doing a rotation in surgery however I felt I wasn't getting enough time assisting.

I can help a lot of other people who've gone through the same thing by building a center that will help men and women who don't have the funds to take care of themselves and get the medical treatment.

So I really did stop and change what I saw I was about and really try to put that principle into play as the center of everything - my friendships my marriage my career my family my way of being in the world. And that changed everything for me.

I went nearly 30 years without being able to really seriously entertain marriage or a family. In fact the word 'marriage' would actually give me a shake when it was brought up.

Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.