[Cardinal John O'Connor] had [my wife] Margot and me over for drinks a couple of times. That was something I never could have envisioned back when I was a kid in Boston, that a cardinal and I would be, if not breaking bread, at least breaking Scotch.

[I wanted] to play the clarinet well so I could be in Duke Ellington's band, but that's now impossible.

My contact with [Cato] was strange. They're ideologues, like Trotskyites. All questions must be seen and solved within the true faith of libertarianism, the idea of minimal government. And like Trotskyites, the guys from Cato can talk you to death.

[Bill Shawn] didn't edit the writers very strongly, but he knew what he wanted.

I once did a - the first piece on Malcolm X that anyone had ever seen in the - white press.

I live in the Village right near NYU, which is taking over most of the Village. I've lived there for most of my time in New York. One of the things I like about the Village is, it's considered the kind of area where you can't have skyscrapers or, actually, many tall buildings. So you can see the sky which, I think, is a benefit.

Margot [Hentoff] dislikes Bill Clinton because he's totally untrustworthy, and you really ought to have some faith in whoever's going to be your president.