What scares me is how easily it happened.
There are enough people who are starting to be actively involved that we can turn things around. And we need to encourage others to become involved.
[My father] was very impressed when he saw "Death of a Salesman," I must say. He recognized himself to some extent.
Max Askeli was a very courageous, principled man up to a point. He had left Italy before he was thrown in jail by [Francesco] Mussolini.
Margot [Hentoff] dislikes Bill Clinton because he's totally untrustworthy, and you really ought to have some faith in whoever's going to be your president.
I was very much against the Vietnam War, and Max Askeli was visiting Lyndon Johnson in the White House cheering him on, writing editorials. And in The Voice one day I once referred to him as Commander Askeli. And I called in to The Reporter to go over the galleys of a music piece I had written, and the editor whispered to me, `It's not gonna run. You're not gonna run. Max Askeli has fired you because of what you said about him. '
A woman in the audience asked [Barack] Obama about her mother. Her mother was 101 years old and was in need of a certain kind of procedure. Her doctor didn't want to do it because of her age. However, another doctor did and told this woman there is a joy of life in this person. The woman asked President Obama how he would deal with this sort of thing, and Obama said we cannot consider the joy of life in this situation. He said I would advise her to take a pain killer. That is the essence of the President of the United States.
We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. Sometimes it's just not going to work out.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness.
Because the newer methods of treatment are good, it does not follow that the old ones were bad: for if our honorable and worshipful ancestors had not recovered from their ailments, you and I would not be here today.
I told Augustus the broad outline of my miracle: diagnosed with Stage IV thyroid cancer when I was thirteen. (I didn’t tell him that the diagnosis came three months after I got my first period. Like: Congratulations! You’re a woman. Now die. )