If [Williams] would like to meet, that is what we want.

I think that it's commendable that [Williams] would take a step to apologize for an obvious offensive, divisive statement. But I think it's also a pragmatic attempt to limit the damages on the city's part. It's intelligent for the city to do that.

The primary motivation [of the lawsuit] is to continue to illicit change. [The students need to be educated] on issues such as diversity and tolerance. They need to be taught properly.

Where humanity is going to find itself in, say, 20, 30, 40, or 50 years would be very difficult to predict, I think. There are moments, of course, when you think that it's going from bad to worse, but there are other moments when you think that human efforts are really flowering into something really fantastic.

Half the stuff I have done which has been successful would never have been made if it had been shown to focus groups.

He'll even let himself be characterized as perverse. He's not. He's the opposite of perverse. He's coaxing our perversions, our suppressed perversions, into the open and helping us to deal with them in this wonderful way.