And wouldn't you know he'd be a singing man.

We're all surrounded by what I call faux language, fake language of commerce, of news media.

Sometimes the names were humiliating, deliberately so. Somebody would pick out your flaw. If you were little, they would call you Shorty. And if you were angry, they would call you the Devil.

For a long time I was convinced that the conflict between Jewish people and black people in this country was a media event.

If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning, it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.

The peace I am thinking of is the dance of an open mind when it engages another equally open one.

Would it be all right? Would it be all right to go ahead and feel? Go ahead and count on something?