This sounds corny, but I once told a kid when I was in a the library conference, the best - not the best, what I really hope for is that someday 20, 30 years from now, some kid, 12-year-old, 15-year-old, in Des Moines will be going through the stacks, if they have stacks anymore - they probably won't - and find a book of mine and get something from it.

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

When I was a kid in Boston, it was one of the most anti-Semitic cities in the country. If you were living in the ghetto as I was, the Jewish ghetto part of Roxbury, and you went out alone at night, you might be subject to having people attacking you for being a Christ killer.

At least they [people] showed the world we could elect a black president.

We disagree heavily on abortion [with Margot Hentoff].

[Max Askeli] started this very good magazine [The Reporter]. In fact, Meg Greenfield, who's now the editorial page editor of The Washington Post, was one of the star reporters there.

I say personally because I am 84 years old, and [Barack Obama's] is the first administration that has scared me in terms of my lifespan.