“I worked the circus, carnival, I had my own medicine show, I worked 18 years of radio.”

As long as you gave it your best shot, even if in the opinion of others ‘you failed,’ you didn’t fail.

I know who I am. I don’t have to brag. I know what I contributed. I know what I did.

I think people need housing. And there’s empty buildings, I think people should live in there.

The struggle goes on. The victory is in the struggle, for me. And I accepted that a long time ago.

I prefer that for my own satisfaction over radio, there’s no audience. TV, there’s no audience. I need the response of the audience, even if it’s a silent response.

Every Friday I used to have about fifty, sixty kids who would wait for me on Sunset Boulevard and I’d take them all to dinner. All runaways.

The ruling class is smarter than you, and they’re more creative. And if you forget that lesson, you go down the drain.

The most brutal war, the greatest amount of casualties that America’s ever had.

My secret for success? I don’t know what the hell success means.

But find something that you absolutely love doing. And then get to love the way you do it. That’s the uniqueness of all of us. That’s it.

America gets the politicians they deserve. That’s it. And you keep struggling.

Understood what the struggle was about. My mother. Couldn’t read or write, but she had more sense than many a graduate from Harvard.

Do they have a right? You’re damn right they have a right!

What motivated me? My mother. My mother was an immigrant woman, a peasant woman, struggled all her life, worked in the garment center.

I was an organizer in the Food, Agricultural and Tobacco Workers Union down in North Carolina.

The United States, per capita, at a certain period in its history, had the most junkies of any country ever in the world – right after the Civil War.

Society is like a crowd in carnival costumes with everyone fearful that others will see through his disguise.

Crewing and being on film sets is kind of like being in the carnival, with carnie folks.

Marriage isn’t a carnival ride.

So likewise in João Gilberto Noll, readers shouldn’t expect samba and Carnival and football. The Brazilian national identity is not one of his primary concerns.