My father was pretty independent. He was - he was arrested once in Nashville when he was on one of his sales trips because he had a black - guy to lunch. So that took a fair amount of courage at the time.

I grew up in a household in which we had a clock that we won at Revere Beach during the Depression - one of those brass clocks that didn't work - but it showed Franklin D. Roosevelt standing at the wheel of the New Deal.

I went to school at a place that also shaped my life, Boston Latin School.

[William Shawn] took over The Voice and tried to turn it into New York Magazine - very glitzy covers that promised practically nothing in terms of what was inside, very rushed paper anymore. You - not very contemplative, thoughtful or whatever.

A liberal was somebody who expected and hoped that government would help the poor - you know, that whole routine. I did not know then and I've learned since that in an area that means a lot to me, free speech, liberals are as bad as many conservatives in trying to censor speech.

[Barack Obama's ] only principle is his own aggrandizement. This is a very dangerous mindset for a president to have.

However, I never thought that [George W.] Bush himself was, in any sense, "evil."