Good talkers are people who use interesting language and have a lot of energy in speech and who also listen.

Let us go forth with fear and courage and rage to save the world.

People will sometimes say, "Why don't you write more politics?" And I have to explain to them that writing the lives of women IS politics.

Write what will stop your breath if you don’t write.

Today's wars are about oil. But alternate energies exist now - solar, wind - for every important energy-using activity in our lives. The only human work that cannot be done without oil is war.

Sometimes you find that what is most personal is also what connects you most strongly with others.

Sometimes, walking with a friend, I forget the world.

Women should stick together. Didn’t you learn anything yet?

All that is really necessary for survival of the fittest, it seems, is an interest in life, good, bad or peculiar.

Literature, fiction, poetry, whatever, makes justice in the world. That's why it almost always has to be on the side of the underdog.

I lived in a house in the East Bronx, a totally Jewish neighborhood on East 172nd Street. You didn't see Christians much, although one lived next door. We thought they were kind of a minority.

What was it like to be so confident even in your failings that you weren't the least bit bothered when other people pointed them out? I was almost envious.

We don't know where we're going, but isn't is fun to go?

I think training of better Youth Coaches is essential.

So just to be clear, I'm not going to sign any package that somehow prevents the top rate from going up for folks at the top 2 percent.

For the purpose of my life, I don't ask the question. First of all, I believe. I think the Five Books of Moses are inspired. Call it divine. I don't know. But I would certainly call it inspired.

I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favor of doing it.

Poetry connects you to yourself, to the self that doesn't know how to talk or negotiate.

Online journalism has rendered us all news wire hacks - get it posted fast, forget about context or nuance or interpretation, and errors will be fixed on the fly.

One of the first jobs I ever had was opening clams in a seafood restaurant, so I'm pretty quick at it.