The [George W.] Bush administration would go into court on any kind of a case that they thought might embarrass them and would argue that it was a state secret and the case should not be continued.[Barack] Obama is doing the same thing, even though he promised not to.

William Shawn was the editor of The New Yorker and for whom I worked for, God, 27 years; a man I respected enormously because of what he did, - what the magazine was about.

[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.

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 had written a book called "Boston Boy" some years ago, and that took me from the time I could speak, I guess, in Boston through the time when I finally left to come to New York. One was understanding and coping with anti-Semitism. Boston, at the time, was the most anti-Semitic city in the country. And I found out when I was an adolescent that you have to be crazy to go out after dark all by yourself; you'd get your head bashed in.

The need for education for the individual student should be recognized... home, neighborhood. But instead of that, we have the future being determined by standardized testing.

The immigration bill - the new immigration bill - [Bill Clinton] has stripped the courts, which Congress can do under the leadership of the president, so that people who had a right to asylum or to petition - for asylum who were legal residents are now unable to go through because that part of the bill has been taken out.