Once or twice a day, I am enveloped inside what I like to call the Impenetrable Shield of Melancholy. This shield, it is impenetrable. Hence the name. I cannot speak. And while I can feel myself freeze up, I can't do anything about it.

The true American patriot is by definition skeptical of the government.

The whole point of Louis Armstrong is that no one can really figure him out. There was a while where I thought you could try.

I still believe in public radio's potential. Because it's the one mass medium that's still crafted almost entirely by true believers.

Clemenza's overriding responsibility is to his family. He takes a moment out of his routine madness to remember that he had promised his wife that he would bring dessert home. His instruction to his partner in crime is an entire moral manifesto in six little words: 'Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.

You know you've reached a new plateau of group mediocrity when even a Canadian is alarmed by your lack of individuality.

I didn't come from any kind of academic background, but I lived in a college town and I knew people who weren't without pretense. There was this idea in the town that if something was European it would be good.