Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA.

The discussion of ideas as opposed to the American narcissistic obsession with what's going on with the self, that's the general thing people are talking about.

When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision.

But there are a number of attitudes that should not be emotionally or psychologically ingested by young people.

The point is, you have an ethnic heritage and you have a human heritage. Your human heritage includes everything of human value.

In America, we have to learn to be patient enough to figure out what somebody is saying. Somebody might actually be saying something.