Your body's always going through changes. It's fattening or thinning or wrinkling or blotching, and the only thing you really have control over is putting some decoration on it.

The first thing I did [in Michigan] was join a picket line of a pizzeria in Ann Harbor in 1963 that didn't allow African Americans to eat there.

Teaching has always been, for me, linked to issues of social justice. I've never considered it a neutral or passive profession.

One of the things that's complicated about writing anything is that it's an act of narcissism, and then of course once it sails out into the world, you have to let go of it.

Politicians are conservative by nature.

Fairly apolitical. Kind of aspiring to participate in life. I'm 18-19 years old. Wanting to dive into the world and finding the world opening for me in ways that were unimaginable. I didn't sleep for the whole first year at university because it was too much going on. Too many films to see, too many concerts to go to.

I was arrested in 1965 for opposing the war in Vietnam. There were 39 of us arrested that day. But thousands opposed us. And the majority of the people in the country supported the war then.