[Ayres] was our city because we were building it. That's how I felt when I walked around town.

All this happened, more or less.

Only in books do we learn what’s really going on.

I now believe that the only way in which Americans can rise above their ordinariness, can mature sufficiently to rescue themselves and to help rescue their planet, is through enthusiastic intimacy with works of their own imagination.

The artist makes his living by pretending, by putting it in a meaningful hole though no such holes exist.

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

And what gift of America to the rest of the world is actually most appreciated by the rest of the world? It is African American jazz and its offshoots. What is my definition of jazz? Safe sex of the highest order.