The Great Depression was going on, so that the station and the streets teemed with homeless people, just as they do today. The newspapers were full of stories of worker layoffs and farm foreclosures and bank failures, just as they are today. All that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a Great Depression. We may even be hiding a Third World War.

The planet was being destroyed by manufacturing processes, and what was being manufactured was lousy, by and large.

You know who was a hero? Franklin Roosevelt.

I will say, too, that lovemaking, if sincere, is one of the best ideas Satan put in the apple she gave to the serpent to give to Eve. The best idea in that apple, though, is making jazz.

I have had all I can stand of not taking myself seriously.

She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.

The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest.