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

The past is interesting to me because it's been dumbed down or flattened out, or academically nitpicked so you can't get any life out of it, you just get data.

Unless carefree, mother love was a killer.

I don't think I knew any of my father's friends - male friends - by their real names. I remember them only by their nicknames.

The function of freedom is to free someone else.

I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game.

if they put an iron circle around your neck I will bite it away