"Sometimes an unexpected chord change can be the difference between a good song and a great song."

“If you have moved over vast territories and dared to love silly things, you will have learned even from the most primitive items collected and put aside in your life.”

“What we need most right now, at this moment, is a kind of patriotic grace - a grace that takes the long view, apprehends the moment we're in, comes up with ways of dealing with it, and eschews the politically cheap and manipulative. That admits affection and respect. That encourages them. That acknowledges that the small things that divide us are not worthy of the moment; that agrees that the things that can be done to ease the stresses we feel as a nation should be encouraged, while those that encourage our cohesion as a nation should be supported.”

“Writing poetry is the hard manual labor of the imagination.”

Source : Ishmael Reed (1995). “Airing Dirty Laundry”, Perseus Books

“When you become senile, you won't know it.”

“You get America out of Iraq, you get Israel out of Palestine.”

Source : "Readings from Howard Zinn’s 'Voices of a People’s History of the United States'". "Democracy Now!" with Amy Goodman, www.democracynow.org. February 20, 2006.

“I think the great Mexican cuisine is dying because there are fast foods now competing, because there are supermarkets, and supermarkets can't afford to keep in stock a lot of these very perishable products that are used for fine Mexican cooking. Women are working and real Mexican cooking requires enormous amounts of time.”

“When you have a character to work with, you carry them around in a strange way - they make you look at the world in a different way.”

“I don't have any great love for Chicago. What the hell, a childhood around Douglas Park isn't very memorable. I remember the street fights and how you were afraid to cross the bridge 'cause the Irish kid on the other side would beat your head in. I left Chicago a long time ago.”