When I was a child the mailman came once a day. Now the mail arrives every moment. I used to believe it was preposterous that people could fall in love online. Now I see that all relationships are virtual, even those that take place in person. Whether we use our bodies or a keyboard, it all comes down to two minds crying out from their solitude.

I was forced to think very hard about what it meant to be me, what it means to be a person who is only a brain. Pascal's 'thinking reed' really does capture it, because I'm just a bunch of dead muscles thinking.

How people need the possibility of sharing, of not being alone. It’s bad to be poor, but it’s difficult to be alone.

I have come to realize the extraordinary capacity for evil that all of us have because we have now heard the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and there have been revelations of horrendous atrocities that people have committed. Any and every one of us could have perpetrated those atrocities. The people who were perpetrators of the most gruesome things didn’t have horns, didn’t have tails. They were ordinary human beings like you and me. That’s the one thing. Devastating! But the other, more exhilarating than anything that I have ever experienced — and something I hadn’t expected — to discover that we have an extraordinary capacity for good. People who suffered untold misery, people who should have been riddled with bitterness, resentment and anger come to the Commission and exhibit an extraordinary magnanimity and nobility of spirit in their willingness to forgive, and to say, “Hah! Human beings actually are fundamentally good.” Human beings are fundamentally good. The aberration, in fact, is the evil one, for God created us ultimately for God, for goodness, for laughter, for joy, for compassion, for caring.

I don’t much want to play anymore. I enjoyed the game as a young man, but I don’t enjoy it now.

I was the third Saab dealer in the United States — you could have a dealership just by asking for one. Had to put up my own money for five cars. Terrible car then, may I say.

What makes life worth living are the saints I meet-they can be long-time friends or someone I meet on a street. They find a way to behave decently in an indecent society.

Bad things happening to my children and grandchildren.

I was going to be a journalist. But after the war I studied anthropology, just in order to become educated. I thought it was worth knowing the science of man. I still intended to become a journalist, but there were no jobs, because the reporters who had gone to war were coming back and were entitled to their jobs, and the women who had replaced them were damned if they’d leave, and they shouldn’t have left.

I’m lucky…that I’m free to do art, and presumably to keep my soul growing, by finding something else to do. Participation in the arts--drawing, dancing, and all that--makes the soul grow. That’s why you engage in it. That’s how you grow a soul.