I can still boss people around. I can still write. I can still read. I can still eat, and I can still have very strong views.

American social arrangements, economic arrangements, the degree of inequality in American life, the relatively small role played by the government in American public life and so forth, compares to exactly the opposite conditions in most of the European societies.

I do think we're on the edge of a terrifying world, and that many young people know that but don't know how to talk about it.

The East European small countries have a sense of betrayal, of having been forgotten by Western leaders.

As recently as the 1970s, the idea that the point of life was to get rich and that governments existed to facilitate this would have been ridiculed: not only by capitalism's traditional critics but also by many of its staunchest defenders.

Words can make the illness a subject I can master, and not one that one simply emotes over.

I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life; but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.