A reporter is never put off by somebody not wanting to be interviewed.

Throughout [Barack] Obama's career, he promised to limit the state secrets doctrine which the Bush-Cheney administration had abused enormously.

Fortune ought to be a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.

At the time there was a hospital strike in New York and the Catholic hospitals were part of a general consortium, and the head of the consortium had decided that they were finally going to replace some of the striking workers. And I hear [John] O'Connor yelling, `Over my dead body will you replace any of those workers! They have a right to strike.' So I figured, `This is interesting.'

[Bill Shawn] had always been in The New Yorker immaculately dressed - quietly, immaculately dressed, very soft-spoken. On the phone I could hardly hear him sometimes.

The need for a pro-life point of view undergirds everything you do.

My favorite story about O'Connor - one of them - is I was in Toronto at a pro-life conference.I had a session before he was to come on,I thought very moderately - that not have unwanted abortions was to have much more research on contraception. Two true-faith people came out of the audience, wrested the microphone out of my hand and said, `That is im - inappropriate, improper. Pro-lifers do not believe in contraception.' [John] O'Connor's watching this said,`I want to tell you I'm delighted that Nat is not a member of the Catholic Church. We have enough trouble as it is.'