"Thirty-two years ago, I became a vegetarian. I always thought it was a bit weird eating dead bodies even though my parents said it was all right. But I saw "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre," and that did it. In the movie, they're doing the same thing to people that they do to animals, and so I gradually got off eating meat.... The health thing came way later. Veganism came four years ago, and it was more of a health decision."

"For my whole life I can’t remember not doing what I’m doing now, and I’m seventy. I was picking out four-part harmony at eight and nine years of age on the piano. Why? I don’t know. I don’t care. All …"

"The modern world has largely forgotten, and our educational systems ignore, the primary importance, in the evolution of man, of various types of symbolic communication—the communication embodied in ge…"

"You are a separate people, just like the Persians and the Arabs, who have the same religion as the Turks. Your ancestors existed before the Romans and the Turks. Religion has nothing to do with nation…"

"Hours later, Sean Penn and I were sitting in the office of Iraq’s deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz. Dressed in a business suit, he greeted us cordially. His voice reminded me of a foghorn. In a far c…"