I'm not a victim - I never want to be perceived that way.

Part of what I want to do is sort of reclaim my story - it belongs to me and to my children, who have to live with whoever their mother is.

I love my books.

My job is to stay alive until the medicine and research catch up.

I'm part of a community that holds each other up, and it's been great to be held up too.

A lot of sad stories in a row - that wears on you.

I loved campaigning.

My heart goes out to the grieving parents who lost their two-year-old or their newborn.

People find it a great blessing if their child left behind a child.

My father had gone to Vietnam.

Growing up in an Italian family, you use a harsh tone and 10 minutes later everybody forgets about it.

Life is this great big blackboard, and on it you write all the things that you do.

I've spent a lot of words on my own mortality.

I have three living children for whom this is a father who I want them to love and on whom they're going to have to rely if my disease takes a bad turn.

Everybody makes personal decisions that are right for them and if you're in political life, you're used to having those analyzed.

By what you do, you teach your children how to respond to difficult information.

Honestly, I get energized by the crowds. They feed me emotionally.

The worst thing to me would be that you put on the face you think people want to see, and then they don't like it and you think, Would they have liked the real me?

You wouldn't know I was sick unless you knew I was sick.

It's just a part of our nature to hope.

In a sense, having cancer takes you by the shoulders and shakes you.

To be perfectly frank, there is an odd place after losing a child, where you think somehow your life is worth less.

One of the things that I think you see sometimes in politics is a certain degree of caution. It's usually advised by consultants who don't want to see you march to the end of a limb.

What we hope to achieve is a society that doesn't value a white man because he's a white man, but also doesn't value a woman because she's a woman, or a black because he's a black.