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.

At the time there was a hospital strike in New York and the Catholic hospitals were part of a general consortium, and the head of the consortium had decided that they were finally going to replace some of the striking workers. And I hear [John] O'Connor yelling, `Over my dead body will you replace any of those workers! They have a right to strike.' So I figured, `This is interesting.'

I knew A.J. Muste very well. I tried for a while to be like he was, and that is a total pacifist. But then Margot [my wife] hit me hard in the stomach one day to prove to me that I wasn't as perfect a pacifist as I thought I was.

I had not been very kind to J. Edgar Hoover. And the field agent had written on - it was sent directly to Hoover - that - the director should see this - `And, besides, Hentoff is a lousy writer.' And I thought that went a bit far.

You see that in his foreign policy [Barack] Obama lacks a backbone - both a constitutional backbone and a personal backbone.

That [race] is still part of what [Barack Obama] is riding on. Except that, too, is diminishing.

I met [my wife Margot] on Fire Island when I had a house there many years ago.