I think that cases are, in some senses, are a little like children. I have six children. It’s hard to say which one I’m most proud of. But I think that certainly the marriage equality cases are cases that I am enormously proud of. I think that we have in those cases contributed to a really important change in this country. The cases that I’ve done in the area of racial equality as a young lawyer working in Mississippi, and then later on I successfully sued the Republican National Committee on behalf of the Democratic National Committee in 1986, I think it was, to stop the RNC from targeting black and minority districts with voter ID, voter security kinds of tactics. That litigation I’m pretty proud of.

I am of course honoured to get this recognition for all the work I’ve done over the years, but I’m also proud for my family and for my native country and my adopted country, and especially for Turkey it’s quite important.

I’m the most proud when I get something from cities, or people. At first I was against awards, you know. I would always say, “This is so fake. The people who vote on this stuff, they never listen to the music.” But for me it’s when I received awards or something from the city. Just to go to somebody’s house and eat. Or people come and say, “We spent our anniversary checking you out,” or “We were making love to one of your records, and we had a child!” See that kind of stuff makes me feel good. Like you get a key to the city and the people are really into it. Not just, “Oh, let’s give him the key to the city because he got some publicity.” It will be some people you knew, and you were there at their school, and you worked in the community.

I was really happy because Rolex did something that was almost impossible: to organize it during a pandemic, to do it at such a high level, and to provide this financial aid to all these people… I was really proud.