What you’ve got to say, you say.
Category Archive: 1930
I think if I hadn’t become a sociologist, I would have become very anti-intellectual.
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency – the belief that the here and now is all there is.
Jazz is very important. It’s not something I can put my finger on. When I’m writing at my favorite time, I like to have the gentle side of Coltrane or Brubeck on the CD player. It creates sort of a spiritual space in which I write best.
I moved up over Lower East Side and I was adopted by eight foster parents; I lived all over New York City with these parents, man, till I was about ten years old.
The most successful ideological effects are those which have no need for words, and ask no more than complicitous silence.
My father went into the armed service and I never saw my mother – I don’t know what happened to her.
Ritual is important to us as human beings. It ties us to our traditions and our histories.
The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.
I have always had trouble recognizing myself in the features of the intellectual playing his political role according to the screenplay that you are familiar with and whose heritage deserves to be questioned.