In those days great teachers at Shortridge [High School] were celebrities. I would look up to them.

What's the point of being alive," she said, "if you're not going to communicate?

How complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

Enjoy your body, use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it, it’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.

Incidentally, I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the great science fiction writer and biochemist Dr. Isaac Asimov. John Updike, who is religious, says I talk more about God than any seminarian. Socialism is, in fact, a form of Christianity, people wishing to imitate Christ.

It's the emptiest and yet the fullest of all human messages: 'Good-bye.