I was raised in an Irish-American home in Detroit where assimilation was the uppermost priority. The price of assimilation and respectability was amnesia. Although my great-grandparents were victims of the Great Hunger of the 1840's, even though I was named Thomas Emmet Hayden IV after the radical Irish nationalist exile Thomas Emmet, my inheritance was to be disinherited. My parents knew nothing of this past, or nothing worth passing on.

[Donald] Trump is fascism, that's all, so we have to find a way to work it out between Hillary [Clinton] and Bernie [Sanders].

We're looking at a quandary here where Bernie's [Sanders] the winner on a moral and even a political basis. He's made history, and she's the winner on the mathematical basis.

Gentrification and consumerism... have destroyed the character of my favorite American haunts, like North Beach, Berkeley, Venice and Aspen.

He likes to take strolls by himself and believes dog-catchers are friendly innkeepers who'll take care of a meal. He's gullible and has never learned to fight back against a ruthless world.

The last time I saw Robert Kennedy was in an elevator by accident also, going up, one week before he was shot.

His herding instinct is so strong that he confuses tractors on a baseball field for sheep. He was hospitalized twice. Once by a line drive and once for attacking a tractor tread.