I'm not a Luddite completely; I believe in refrigerators to cool my martinis, and washing machines because I hate to see women smacking their laundry against a rock. When I hear about hardware, I think of pots and pans, and when I hear about software, I think of sheets and towels.

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

I want, of course, peace, grace, and beauty. How do you do that? You work for it.

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.

There are nascent stirrings in the neighborhood and in the field, articulated by non-celebrated people who bespeak the dreams of their fellows. It may be catching. Unfortunately, it is not covered on the six o'clock news.

A guy I interviewed for Hard Times says, "What do I remember about the Great Depression? That I was hungry, that's all." Elemental things.

When I was asked: "Will shame do it?" Meaning: Will welfare people be shamed into getting respectable work? And I said that shame plays the biggest role there is: The biggest shame is that there is so much abundance around but that so many have so little and so few have so much. That's the shame.