We learned some bad things, and the Vietnam War led to some bad conclusions. We're not the greatest generation, that's for sure.

Mary McCarthy and that Mr. Intellectual kind of guy ... Dwight McDonald? And they were really mean about [Jerome David] Salinger, and oh they were going to destroy him, and just look how thoroughly they destroyed him! No one reads Salinger anymore!

You can't go by what the governments say or do. It's not the governments. It's on the street where there's more hatred of Americans in Britain than in France.

[Jerome David] Salinger was really taken to the cleaners by nasty critics in his day. I think Joan Didion was one of the people who attacked him in a very unfair way.

The Cha-Cha is no more ridiculous than life itself.

In my father's time - he was in college during many transitions in the late 1930s - they had great institutional loyalties... to his college, eventually the navy, the Democratic Party and certain ideals of our country. Those are the things that became broken with my generation.

I'm for people clinging. I'm pro-clinging.