As I was not a good singer - I have started to sing. And because no one could write an appropriate song for me - I started to write songs by myself.
I was in the back of the book [in the The Reporter] doing music.
[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.
I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned.
Violet has the shortest wavelength of the spectrum. Behind it, the invisible ultraviolet. Roses are Red, Violets are Blue. Poor violet, violated for a rhyme.
God is the only sure foundation on which the mind can rest.
When you're young, you don't especially think of yourself as being young. You're just alive and everything's interesting and you don't think of things in terms of age because you're not conscious of it.