I think the evangelicals want to provoke an immense global disaster to precipitate the second coming of Christ.

I wanted to write and think. Activism is a displacing kind of passion.

I was really worn down by an American society that is racist, smugly blind to it, and hugely self-satisfied.

You try to steer a course in American society that's not self-destructive. But America is a country that inflicts injury. It does not like to see anything that comes in response, and accuses one of anger as if it were an unnatural response.

I've always thought I had pretty good instincts for people. There is a short list of people I've worked with over my career with whom I've not been able to distinguish easily between the public persona and the real private person.

I'm aware that because America is so powerful - with its tentacles reaching out to the world - one doesn't escape it by leaving. This is the most dangerous and disturbing time in my life.

You plant twenty coconut trees over here, and twenty coconut trees over there, and you water this batch and don't water that batch. Of the batch you water, nineteen will survive and one will die. Of the batch you don't water, nineteen will die and one will survive.