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

Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.

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

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

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

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.

I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember.