I suppose if I have an epitaph it would be: "Curiosity Did Not Kill This Cat." I don't see retiring in the sense that we view it - I don't see how I could. Dying at the microphone or at the typewriter would not be bad.

'Curiosity never killed this cat’ — that’s what I’d like as my epitaph.

Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.

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.

I have a big mouth, and I never met a petition I didn't like, so of course in the McCarthy days I got in trouble.

Once you wake up the human animal, you can't put it back to sleep again.