You cannot please all of the people all of the time, and that is truer in the arts than anywhere else.

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. By what conduit do we know what we know?

I am determined to give the Yiddish language a fighting chance to survive.

I have always striven to raise the voice of hope for a world where hate gives way to respect and oppression to liberation.

By showing hunger, deprivation, starvation and brutality, as well as endurance and nobility, documentaries inform, prod our memories, even stir us to action. Such films do battle for our very soul.

I prefer to make common cause with those whose weapons are guitars, banjos, fiddles and words.

All too often arrogance accompanies strength, and we must never assume that justice is on the side of the strong. The use of power must always be accompanied by moral choice.

But there is a difference here: When Jewish children are murdered, Arabs celebrate the deed. The death of an Arab child is no cause for celebration in Israel.

No doubt unity is something to be desired, to be striven for, but it cannot be willed into being by mere declarations.

After the advent of the written word, the masses who could not - or were not permitted to - read, were given sermons by the few who could.

Spiritual practice is allowing the temple (your body) to be full of light and to live life as a total celebration.

Fear is a fine spur.

Goodness will find the little boy. It always has. It will again.

A grandparent will accept your calls from anywhere, collect.

When anyone becomes an authority, that is the end of him as far as development is concerned.

I do hope that for the young women watching the show they know it is heightened reality and just grown ups playing teenagers. That's not how it is supposed to go. Just keep it to yourself.

We Negro writers, just by being black, have been on the blacklist all our lives. Censorship for us begins at the color line.

This is the treasure we need today - helping the child become independent of us and make his way by himself, receiving in return his gifts of hope and light.

If you have been, I'm glad you've stopped.

Dolls with no little girls around to mind them were sort of creepy under any conditions.