I put a lot of time and energy into studying the art of filmmaking, but I hadn't put a lot of energy or time into the art of learning how to manage people.

When I say I'm famous, I'm not kidding myself. I know my place in the celebrity kingdom - right at the bottom next to reality-show contestants, local politicians, and day-players on 'Law & Order.'

We've seen the worst that human beings are capable of. We've seen what happens when leaders abandon common decency in favor of rage and hate. Through the lens of history, the Holocaust happened yesterday, the civil rights movement was this morning, so we are not as out of the woods as we might have thought.

In documentaries, the process is that you film a lot of things, and out of what you've shot, something organically reveals itself, and there's a discovery process.

I collected child support in Dade County, and they wrote a rap song about me, so the kids knew about it, and they started asking me questions about child support. What happens if she wastes the money? What happens if he doesn't pay? And I answered the questions.

My grandmother spent her whole life working as a maid, a cook and a babysitter, barely scraping by, but still working hard to give my mother, her only child, a chance in life, so that my mother could give my brother and me an even better one.

I come from a working-class family. They're the people I know and the people I love, I guess. I do not write about them for political reasons, but because, as I see it, most interesting things - social, political, emotional - take place there. It's a bottomless well for an author like me.

As the father of two daughters, the ongoing struggle for women's equality is very personal for me. That's why it has been an honor during my time in Congress to support women's rights by advocating for reproductive rights, equal pay, access to paid maternity leave and quality child care.