 I've always had a strong feeling for the Statue of Liberty, because it became the statue of my personal liberty. |
| I had no idea where these kids at a small private college in the San Fernando Valley were coming from, why they were coming to hear me, or what they needed to know. |
| Children frequently sing meaningful phrases to themselves over and over again before they learn to make a distinction between singing and saying. |
| My rejection of the idea of entertainment in its current form is based on the audience that comes with it. |
| There are editing procedures for talks just as there are editing procedures in jazz improvisation. |
| Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives. |
| I am quite unsatisfied by the distinctions between the oral and literate. |
| My way of thinking is very particular and concrete. It doesn't follow a continuous path. |
| When you grow up in a family of languages, you develop a kind of casual fluency, so that languages, though differently colored, all seem transparent to experience. |
| I'm aware of my audience in a way, and I do try to engage with them while I'm trying to go about my business of thinking. I believe they help me by providing a focus. |
| It's hard being a hostage in somebody else's mouth - or a character in somebody else's novel. |
| The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer. |
| I learned enough Hebrew to stagger through a meaningless ceremony that I scarcely remember. |
| I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton. |
| I didn't think about whether I was writing poems. I was thinking. And the more I was thinking, the more there was I didn't understand. |
| I hardly remember how I started to write poetry. It's hard to imagine what I thought poetry could do. |
| From this entertainment industry, may the gods of language protect us. |
