I call myself a radical conservative. What's that? Well, let's analyze it. Go to the dictionary. Radical: One who gets to the roots of things. And I'm a conservative because I want to conserve the green of the grass, the potability of drinking water, the first amendment of the Constitution and whatever sanity we have left.

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

My doctors were of one mind: unless something was immediately done, I had maybe six months to live. A quintuple bypass was suggested. Quintuple! I was impressed, though somewhat disturbed because I was in the middle of work on a new book.

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

Marvin Miller, I suspect, is the most effective union organizer since John L. Lewis.

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.

We are living in the United States of Alzheimer's. A whole country has lost its memory. When it can't remember yesterday, a country forgets what it once wanted to be.