Henry Ford didn't just create a cheap way of getting away from your in-laws; he basically understood that there was something in us as a culture that wanted to be on the move, that wanted to get out.

Mexico was most powerfully my father's smile and not, as you might otherwise imagine, not language, not pigment.

I don't deny people their fantasy life, but I do think that we desperately need to start realizing just how complicated our reality is in America. Sitcoms just don't show us that.

Intimacy is not trapped within words. It passes through words. It passes. The truth is that intimates leave the room. Doors close. Faces move away from the window. Time passes. Voices recede into the dark. Death finally quiets the voice. And there is no way to deny it. No way to stand in the crowd, uttering one's family language.

So, rather than becoming multicultural, rather than becoming a person of several languages, rather than becoming confident in your knowledge of the world, you become just the opposite. You end up in college having to apologize for the fact that you no longer speak your native language.

There was a poll released yesterday that said most people would rather give up sex than give up their cell phones.

I think the universities have co-opted the intellectual, by and large. But there is an emerging intellectual set coming out of Washington think tanks now. There are people who are leaving the universities and working for the government or in think tanks, simply looking for freedom.