I asked my dad what afflicted meant and he said 'Sickness son, and things that don't fit.'

You feel a sense of urgency, especially at my advanced age, when you're staring into the grave.

I don't absolve my father completely of his responsibility for what he did to us I feel compassion, maybe. He had his demons. But I still can't understand how a man can walk away from children. And leave them to starve, as we nearly did, if it wasn't for my mother going out and begging.

My childhood here... was very limited. So it was a long, long time before I actually went out to Brooklyn.

There's nothing sillier in the world than a teacher telling you don't do it after you already did it.

We never really had any kind of a Christmas. This is one part where my memory fails me completely.

He says, You have to study and learn so that you can make up your own mind about history and everything else but you can't make up an empty mind. Stock your mind, stock your mind. You might be poor , your shoes might be broken , but your mind is a palace.