After age 70, it's patch, patch, patch.
If you're someone people count on, particularly in difficult moments, that's a sign of a life lived honorably.
Clearly, there has been a lack of imagination about how much can go wrong.
There`s a reason people pause their lives to engage in political activism and pressure their local political leaders. Because as a whole, even if you can`t identify any one instance, as a whole pressure works and sometimes it starts with something as simple as pushing the button on the intercom.
Here’s the thing about rights. They’re not actually supposed to be voted on. That’s why they’re called rights.
I'm undoubtedly a liberal, which means that I'm in almost total agreement with the Eisenhower-era Republican party platform.
Activism is setting a goal of something you would like to be different, and figuring out what would have to change to achieve that goal. It's sort of like math.
Rich or poor, every child comes into the world with some imperative need of its own, which shapes its individuality.
Praising people behind their back is monstrously unfair, because the one thing you can't defend yourself against is the good that people say about you.
At the premiere of Hairspray on Broadway, Harvey Fierstein's mom said to my mom, "Didn't we raise great sons?" and my mother just started sobbing, because I'm sure they'd both been through other nights when people didn't say that.
I collected men with interesting names. I already knew a Socrates. He was tall and ugly and intellectual and the son of some big Greek movie producer in Hollywood, but also a Catholic, which ruined it for both of us.