I look upon another's insistence on the merits of his or her life - duties, intellect, accomplishment - and see that most of it is nonsense.

Me, my literary reputation is mostly abroad, but I am anchored here in New York. I can't think of any other place I'd rather die than here.

Public radio is alive and kicking, it always has been.

If you like to read, sometimes it's interesting just to go and see what the reality is, of the word, of the seedy or not so seedy fiction writer, the drunk or sober poet... Sometimes you can go looking for illumination.

A health system that lacks commodities for managing high-mortality infectious diseases and the main killers of mothers and young children will not have an adequate impact. By the same token, even the best-stocked delivery system will have an inadequate impact if it fails to reach the poor.

I have found people on both sides of the aisle, white and black, that'll give you the shirt off their back. And I've also found people that won't give you a piece of bread if you're starving to death.

Nature is very cruel. It is much riskier to love any living being than not. I'm painfully aware that even my little dog is a walking bundle of mortality. I'm painfully aware he's going to pass.

Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin - it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring.