My church is in the detention facilities where I preside and celebrate the Eucharist. To me that's the church. That's the people of God.

Businesses have come and gone at Homeboy Industries. We have had starts and stops, but anything worth doing is worth failing at. We started Homeboy Plumbing. That didn't go so well. Who knew? People didn't want gang members in their homes. I just didn't see that coming.

The poor evangelize you about what's important and what is the Gospel, and that that's where the joy is.

I love movies.

I know two L.A.s. Half my life was around the house my folks had for 46 years at 3rd and Norton. The other half was in Boyle Heights on the Eastside, working with gang members.

We ought not to demonize a single gang member, and we ought not to romanticize a single gang.

Most employers just aren't willing to look beyond the dumbest or worst thing someone has done.

The business of second chances is everybody's business.

I feel called to be faithful.

I don't believe in mistakes. Everything belongs, and, as the homies say, 'It's all good.'

Me wanting a gang member to have a different life would never be the same as that gang member wanting to have one.

The idea that any law enforcement agency or person would ever know these gang members better than Homeboy Industries is impossible.

I'm not going to be here forever. I don't plan on going anywhere, but I don't know anybody for whom death is an exception.

There is no such thing as a bad cop, only disturbing and dominant cop thinking that will invariably lead to excessive force and tragic outcomes.

We can't get at crime unless we know what language it speaks. Otherwise, we are just suppressing the cough, not curing the disease.

I spent the summers of 1984 and 1985 as an associate pastor at Dolores Mission Church, the poorest parish in the Los Angeles archdiocese. In 1986, I became pastor of the church.

For over twenty years, Homeboy Industries has chosen to stand with those on the margins and those whose burdens are more than they can bear; it stands with the poor and the powerless, with the easily-despised and the readily-left out.

I founded Homeboy Industries in 1988 after I buried my first young person killed in our streets because of gang violence.

Richard Rohr is a theologian that I read.

I have a lot of people in my life, and I think there's something key: the thing that leads to intimacy and relationship and connection is tenderness.

Delegations from all over the world visit Homeboy Industries and scratch their heads as we tell them of our difficulty in placing our people in jobs after their time with us. Americans' seeming refusal to believe in a person's ability to redeem himself strikes these folks as foreign indeed.

Anyone who knows gangs knows that lawmakers cannot conceive of a law that would lead a hard-core gang member to 'think twice.'

If the Los Angeles Police Department had enough officers, it could focus on one part of the community and stay there long enough to know and respect the people the officers are called on to protect and serve.

We don't need a specialized gang unit. We need patrol officers who specialize in knowing their community.

Nothing is ever as bad as it seems. Nor does it ever last as long as you think.

I hate 'Rolling Stone' - because I loved it so much. I had the 'Cheap Tricks' cover and the Clash cover on my wall for years, and I just hate what happened to it. It just became the smarmy grad student that sits next to you on the bus.

For trance music to be good, it has to sneak up on you.

My first concert - maybe it was 1979 - was a blur. I'm not sure whether it was Blue Oyster Cult/Cheap Trick/Pat Travers at San Jose Civic Auditorium or The Police/The Knack/Robert Johnson at Berkeley's Zellerbach Auditorium.

Human evolution relies on cooperation, which is why identity politics feels so backward.

The explosion of jihad and its desire to export its contagious madness to all areas of the world have changed the way we view immigration.

It takes a special, selfless person to make music that accommodates the universal need for mindless escapism - or what I call oblivion.

It's pointless to get all huffy about stuff.

Wherever socialism spread, misery followed - and still follows.

Now that President Trump is a reality, I happily have been giving him a chance to see how he does.

I don't think Trevor Noah got his job by being a conservative.

Trump represented a movement of dissatisfaction, the dissent, unhappiness, division cultivated by years of identity politics and the bullying of arrogant, insufferable, intolerant social justice warriors who used the last two terms to punish anyone who reminded them of Daddy.

The people who whine about Fox News are hypocrites - they say they're totally tolerant, but when they run into someone who doesn't share their assumptions, they say, 'Fox News is evil, and it must be stopped.'

I've interviewed everyone from Joe Strummer to Iggy Pop.

I always thought Jon Stewart was an extremely good surgeon with his scalpel. He would have Republicans on who, I guess, were unclear about what Stewart was up to, and while Jon Stewart was being nice, he was building a case for drowning them.

Youthful impatience obscures the endless potential for joy that's standing right in front of you.

The bands I like are not obscure at all. Far from it.

No one wants a lecture when you're getting a latte. So if you get one without asking, isn't that grounds for some discipline?

Obama was never that bad or that great, and the same is probably going to go for Trump.

I don't care much for Hillary Clinton.

Here is the problem with legacy: You'll sacrifice stuff that is not even yours to get it. Take President Obama's Iran deal, when he gave the shirt off his back - and ours, too.

Infected by political ideology, if you dare question climate models, your career is done.

In the absurd idiocy of identity regressive politics, looting is seen as protest, and protecting one's own property is seen as privilege.

The PC rebellion is about a reaction against the media academic complex, which tells us what to say - or else.

Back in the days of world wars, American companies didn't think twice about pitching in to help fight the enemy. Car companies helped bolster tanks, food companies created rations - sometimes they had to do it, but no one had to twist their arm.

Social justice warriors want to return to the Dark Ages when you communicated with a club instead of joining one.