What have we got here in America that we believe we cannot live without? We have the most varied and imaginative bathrooms in the world, we have kitchens with the most gimmicks, we have houses with every possible electrical gadget to save ourselves all kinds of trouble - all so that we can have leisure. Leisure, leisure, leisure! So that we don't go mad in the leisure, we have color TV. So that there will never, never, be a moment of silence, we have radio and Muzak. We can't stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves.

The creative urge is the demon that will not accept anything second rate.

Friends die one by one, but so, thank God, do enemies.

My heroines are part of me and my heroes are part of what I'd like to know.

Toe dancing is a dandy attention getter, second only to screaming.

Ours is an upbeat, a hurried, hasty beat. It keeps pressing us to go farther, to include everything so that we can savor everything, so that we can know everything, so that we will miss nothing. Partly it's greed, but mainly its curiosity. We just want to experience it. And we do.

If you want to understand a nation, look at its dances and listen to its folk songs - don't pay any attention to its politicians.