Being pro-life is a basic perspective of everything I do.

I am an atheist, although I very much admire and have been influenced by many traditionally religious people.

[Miranda Hentoff] was teaching once at Lincoln Center, and the hall was full of other professionals - musicians, professors, teachers. And she was explaining how [Béla] Bartok composed his second piano concerto. And she explained how the music was interwoven with the rhythms and what he had in his mind. And I was just stunned. This is a kid who used to work - on a piano with a cracked keyboard.

I was in the back of the book [in the The Reporter] doing music.

I went to a lecture of [Arthur Koestler ] once, I never met him.

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

I was lecturing at the Columbia Journalism School of Education. I asked them about what was happening to the Fourth Amendment. I said, "By the way, do you know what is in the Fourth Amendment?" One student responded, "Is that the right to bear arms?" It's hard to believe these are bright students.