“I’m very interested in people who are in a situation that needs a little puzzling out. The thing that gets me started on a story is a person in a tough situation.”

Can we imagine a different world? I can. That’s a world where work is rational, it’s in the common good, and we’re actually producing real things rather than spinning our wheels in dreams of consumer heaven.

It’s not Lyndon Johnson who makes the black freedom movement; it’s the black freedom movement who makes Lyndon Johnson.

I don’t regret setting bombs.

[The whole first year at university] was a great time for me and great time of awakening.

I would say for the young: Don’t be straight jacketed by ideology. Don’t be driven by a structure of ideas.

So that’s kind of amazing. But he was offered a cabinet post by Eisenhower in his second term. So he was moderate Republican. But if you asked him, he would’ve said, “I don’t have any politics. I’m a business person.” Mainstream, the American view, as he understood it.

I don’t think saying “I was wrong here, I was wrong there” absolves you of anything particularly, nor does it get you into heaven.

I was a good liberal in some sense at that point. I wanted to end a war. I wanted to support the civil rights movement.

If you were against slavery in 1840 and a white person, you would have been against the law, the Bible, your church, your pastor, your parents, common sense, tradition, everything. You would have been against everything.

“We all hated the war in Vietnam.” Well, it was easy to hate the war in Vietnam 40 years on.

The only people who have never had a problem with me speaking in their venues are independent bookstores and libraries. Universities and humanities councils have canceled me, but never an independent bookstore.

When I was arrested opposing the war in Vietnam in 1965, as I said about 20 or 30% of people were opposed to the war. By 1968, more than half of Americans were opposed to the war.

I wish I had been wiser. I wish I had been more effective, I wish I’d been more unifying, I wish I’d been more principled.

The only path to the final defeat of imperialism and the building of socialism is revolutionary war.

Frankly, the gay movement on the ground has been one of the great propulsive things that has made politicians do what they do.

It was the Democratic Party, it was the Presidential election. We elected a president [Barack Obama]; we didn’t elect a king. So all the speculation in the next three months.

Things happen differently when you’re actually here, so you can’t put out a general guideline that’s gonna show up in text and be interpreted. There are no rules. Just be yourself.

I am very much interested in the so-called useless object. I mean, it takes perfect craftsmanship, beautiful material carefully measured and crafted, but at the same time it’s really useless.

I’m not interested in how things were, or how we ended up where we are now.

The orchestral or symphonic music never interested me.

I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines.

I want to make sure people are constantly surprised and interested.

I’ve always been interested in films where you can identify with the actors.

It’s a repository for my brain, everything that I could possibly be interested in.