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.

You pay your money, you take your choice. I get the audience my language attracts and I lose the ones it repels.

The self is an oral society in which the present is constantly running a dialogue with the past and the future inside of one skin.

I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus.

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.

My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path.

I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know.