Nothing is more boring than some old person going on and on about the way things used to be.

I haven't been silent. I teach, I lecture at universities, I write, I'm not silent.

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.

It's the height of the Cold War, but I grew up in apolitical family and politics wasn't on the agenda.

We should open our eyes, see what's in front of us, and act.

Every politician - FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama - they're all conservative by nature. They are part of the big thing and they're moving in a very constrained world.

I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.