I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate.

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.

I'm not sure what theory is, unless it's the pursuit of fundamental questions.

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

I was trying to find out what it was that everybody else understood without giving up my stubborn and hard-won lack of understanding.

The ancient Greek "oral poets" all had this anxiety about the deficiencies of their memories and always began poems by praying to the muse to help them remember.

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.