I don't know that anybody has walked up to me in the street or in a store or in the grocery and said to me, 'I hope you bomb Assad.' Certainly plenty have said, 'No; thumbs down, thumbs down, thumbs down.'

I think that much of the truth has been withheld from the American people.

I had a friend who was getting married. I said, 'You're getting married - I didn't know about all this!' She said, 'I need health benefits.'

I call Washington 'the city of the perishable.'

Washington and Congress are steeped in history and tradition, and that's been very male-oriented.

My vision for the future always centers around our children - it always centers around our children. So anytime anybody asks me what are the three most important issues facing the Congress, I always say the same thing: 'Our children, our children, our children.'

I love having the support of my caucus. We have a good working relationship.

They're anti-government ideologues who dominate the Republican Party.

I read that my lifelong dream is to serve as speaker with Hillary Clinton as president. So what?

I never dread going back to Congress.

Republicans support opening the floodgates to special interest money and suppressing the right to vote. It's just plain wrong.

I think about my parents all the time, especially on Sunday when I'm at Mass. My mother always said, 'We do not pray to win elections. We pray for people's health, we pray that God's will be done, we pray that we do our best. But we do not pray to win elections.'

If you make - not have - $1 million a year, should you not participate in the sense of community of our country? I'm willing to put that on the table.

We are not going back to the failed policies of the past. We are fighting for the middle class!

I have newspapers coming to me and saying, 'Can we get in on the TARP?'.

I have deep emotions about the American people. If I were to cry for anything, I would cry for them and the policies that they're about to face.

My biggest fight has been between those who wanted to do something incremental and those who wanted to do something comprehensive. We won that fight, and once we kick through this door, there'll be more legislation to follow.

Social Security has never failed to pay promised benefits, and Democrats will fight to make sure that Republicans do not turn a guaranteed benefit into a guaranteed gamble.

With Americans worried about losing their jobs, their savings, their homes and their chance at the American Dream, the New Direction Congress will work in a bipartisan way to lift our economy and help America's middle class.

In our recovery package we put new standards of accountability and transparency, which we hope will now apply.

The president led us into the Iraq war on the basis of unproven assertions without evidence; he embraced a radical doctrine of pre-emptive war unprecedented in our history; and he failed to build a true international coalition.

Democrats embrace The Affordable Care Act. We're very proud of it.

When taxpayers are subsidizing low wages, people should be aware of that. We're subsidizing an economy. We're not subsidizing people. They are doing a hard day's work. When we're not rewarding work actively, there's something wrong with the system.

We haven't really gotten the credit for what we have done.