I find labels "liberal" and "conservative" of little meaning. Our language has become perverted along with the thoughts of many of us.

How come you don't work fourteen hours a day? Your great-great-grandparents did. How come you only work the eight-hour day? Four guys got hanged fighting for the eight-hour day for you.

People are hungry for stories. It's part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another. -Studs Terkel

Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirits.

Perhaps it is this specter that most haunts working men and women: the planned obsolescence of people that is of a piece with the planned obsolescence of the things they make. Or sell.

I want people to talk to one another no matter what their difference of opinion might be.

We are living in the United States of Alzheimer's. A whole country has lost its memory. When it can't remember yesterday, a country forgets what it once wanted to be.

Hope never trickles down. It always springs up.

Ordinary people are capable of doing extraordinary things, and that's what it's all about. They must count.

I've always felt, in all my books, that there's a deep decency in the American people and a native intelligence - providing they have the facts, providing they have the information.

More and more we are into communications; and less and less into communication.

You look at beauty because it is one of the few profound things that humans can do.

The magic of fiction lies in deluding reason that it is fiction.

I hope what I do and what I just did inspires people around the world to reach for the skies.

If I dont get at least one e-mail every ten minutes, I feel unloved. Even junk mail makes me feel seen. Sad, I know. Sigh.

Viewed as a drama, the war is somewhat disappointing.

If you can help anybody even a little, be glad.

I get a craving like I fiend for nicotine. But I don't need a cigarette, know what I mean?

Enjoy life while it is happening.

I feel like D.C. is one of the places in America that really holds on to history. The monuments inspire me, especially at night.

My dad has a weird hobby; he collects empty bottles... which sounds so much better than "alcoholic."