If there is knowledge, it lies in the fusion of the book and the street.

Reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation.

The history of those who shed those other tears, the history of those anonymous millions, is what Terkel wants readers and listeners to come away with. What's it like to be that goofy little soldier, scared stiff, with his bayonet aimed at Christ? What's it like to have been a woman in a defense-plant job during World War II? What's it like to be a kid at the front lines? It's all funny and tragic at the same time.

Unless there's a grassroots movement of some sort, with TV and the media in general in the hands of fewer and fewer people - the Murdochians, you know - all we hear is the one point of view. There has to be something communal.

You happen to be talking to an agnostic. You know what an agnostic is? A cowardly atheist.

I'm called an oral historian, which is something of a joke. Oral history was here long before the pen, long before Gutenberg and the printing press. The difference is I have a tape recorder in my hand.

Don't be an examiner, be the interested inquirer.