I'm intending to work on juvenile justice reform, sentencing reform, reentry, drug treatment, access to mental health care.

My dad set a clear model for me for what manhood was all about.

As a government leader, I'm not going to sit on the sidelines and watch all these other sectors innovate. I'm going to do everything I can as a leader to be in that innovation, to be a provocateur for that innovation.

I'm a person that's grounded in faith and believe that my core values, motivation, inspiration, draw from a conception of the world in that way.

Our nation was founded with a bunch of founding legislators who joined together to move our country out of the blocks and get us started, and every generation since then has found a way to advance the ball down the field.

I don't know what the strategy will be in Washington. The reality is, is, I have got to go down there, as my mentor, as people like Bill Bradley have told me to do, get to know your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, recognize that they, too, beat with the same heart and the same type of blood.

I come from a mother who can cry at a G.E. commercial.

The joke I always make is I'm either running for reelection, running for Senate, running for governor, or running for my life. The latter is also a viable possibility.

Everybody wants to find their soul mate, and I'm no different. That's definitely what I want in the future.

I'm going to have setbacks and failures; I'm not going to see change right away all of the time or most of the time. But everybody I've ever respected has failed at one thing or another. I've definitely fallen on my face. But I've also had a comparatively easy life.

When I was just a twenty-something, I came to Newark, and I found a connection to the city in a spiritual way. I found a connection here and people here that reminded me so much of my roots and my own family.

The richness of America is that we are diverse. We're not Sweden. We're not Norway. We are a great American experiment. And as soon as we start trying to forget race or turn our back on race, number one, we don't confront the real racial realities that still persist.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

I debated between law school and divinity.

There was a small point in my life in law school, right before I moved to Newark, when I didn't know what I wanted to do, and I felt so lost.

I'd gladly take a grenade, if it meant saving Newark.

I am a geek nerd who happened to have a temporary period of jockiness.

I just know that I'm innovative. I'm a quick thinker... In Washington, I just want to be a senator who finds a way to drive change and not figure out a way to conform.

People are always trying to draw simplistic dialectics that can capture things.

This November, with the re-election of President Barack Obama, this generation of Americans will ever expand upon the hope, the truth and the promise of America.

You should be able to afford health care for your family. You should be able to retire with dignity and respect. And you should be able to give your children the kind of education that allows them to dream even bigger, go even farther and accomplish even more than you could ever imagine.

We choose forward. We choose inclusion. We choose growing together. We choose American economic might and muscle, standing strong on the bedrock of the American ideal: a strong, empowered and ever-growing middle class.

Our platform emphasizes that a vibrant, free and fair market is essential to economic growth.

One of the very hallmarks of our nation is the ideal of E Pluribus Unum. It is a concept that richly flows from the highest ideals of our nation.