“I am, or have been, a certified Grateful Dead freak; I don’t know how many Dead concerts I’ve attended, but it has to be more than 25, which for this record addict is a record. What’s more, I never made a conscious decision to lay off."

"On a freezing Friday night I visit Kings County Hospital. Depression hits as soon as I walk through the front doors"

"When John and Paul married they married hard. It was as if their ambivalent relationship to the sexuality of rock and roll fi­nally caught up with them. Men in groups gave way to couples"

“Rather like an aging samurai or a 19th-century empire builder who has lived past his time, Robert Moses remains proud of his monuments and cannot accept the modern challenge to his build-at-any-price ethic.”

"Someone must have traduced Richard N., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning."

"By playing majestic ball and with some front office high­handedness, this Yankees team resembles the pin-striped aristocracy of old"

He commands the most imposing force in theatre, uniting playwrights and philanthropists. Does he run like Henry V or Sammy Glick?

"This walking crystallization of cankerous cynicism possesses such legendary anticharisma that there's something princely about him, something perversely impressive"

“I cannot go out a loser, Jack Johnson went out a loser. Sugar Ray went out a loser. Joe Louis went out a loser… I got to be that black man who gets out on top.”

“Their first conversation of any length took place at a party earlier this year, and there they talked and carried on like old friends.”