Rapid change, accommodating it can be one of the great human capacities. But living through it can be the stuff of stress and often suffering.

To try to be authentic these days, to ask questions of the people in power - it's difficult. This administration has evolved new techniques to handle people like me. Their strategy, in a word, is simple: ignore them.

There are many instances in which those at the uppermost levels of the White House were feeling the President [Barack Obama] was not fully informed of the flow of events and, in some cases, where policies were going in the White House.

Reaching out to any fellow ghetto kids is an act he puts in the same category as doing drugs: the initial rush of warmth and euphoria puts you on a path to ruin.

When you get people standing up saying, 'I'm going to just tell the truth; what do we have to fear?,' it encourages others, and it creates a counterresponse.

Many years later, a psychiatrist friend of mine said something to us. He said, "Respect denial." It's a powerful force.

The media has become more forceful, has begun to recognize its traditional historic role and act on it, and truth is infectious.