Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying.

When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience.

I tended to emphasize the secular, the casual, the colloquial, the vernacular against the sacred.

I reserve the right to tell shaggy dog stories or even common jokes as part of what I'm doing. I don't give a damn if half the audience walks out.

The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer.

I have spoken to expert audiences occasionally, but then no audience is expert over the whole range of things I want to explore.

I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton.