A writer’s job is to ask questions, not provide answers

A writer’s job is to make the ordinary extraordinary, to reveal the magic hidden in everyday life.

If you learn to run your own business, you’ll never have to worry about having a job or pleasing a boss for the rest of your life.

What is a normal childhood? We weren’t rich, we were pretty middle-class. My dad survived from job to job; with him taking care of so many relatives, he couldn’t save any money.

There are growing domestic social and economic problems, in fact, maybe catastrophes. Nobody in power has any intention of doing anything about them. If you look at the domestic programs of the administrations of the past ten years-I include here the Democratic opposition-there’s really no serious proposal about what to do about the severe problems of health, education, homelessness, joblessness, crime, soaring criminal populations, jails, deterioration in the inner cities – the whole raft of problems… In such circumstances you’ve got to divert the bewildered herd, because if they start noticing this they may not like it, since they’re the ones suffering from it. Just having them watch the Superbowl and the sitcoms may not be enough. You have to whip them up into fear of enemies. In the 1930s Hitler whipped them into fear of the Jews and gypsies. You had to crush them to defend yourselves. We have our ways, too. Over the last ten years, every year ot two, some major monster is constructed that we have to defend ourselves against.