The money has always been wasted on me. I don't care for beautiful things, funnily enough. I am my father's daughter. The things that excite me are the smell of a wood-burning stove, uncultivated fields. My house is decaying and falling to pieces. It's not had the love it deserves over twenty years.
I wanted to explore cancer not just biologically, but metaphorically. The idea that tuberculosis in the 19th century possessed the same kind of frightening and decaying quality was very interesting to me, and it seemed that one could explore the idea that every age defined its own illness.
Chicago always hit me as such a gloomy place - I just remember all the snow getting dirty as soon as it would fall, all the decaying brown brick buildings around where we lived, all this soot all over the place.
My very beloved and deceased third-grade teacher, Cliff Kehod, was the one that I really remember calling me Ike a lot. It just stuck. It is a dog's name, but I love dogs.
My deceased patients have taught me over the years to believe in the glass half full, to make good use of the time we have, to be generous - that was their lesson for the Uber-mind, and it was free. 'Do that,' they said, 'and then perhaps death shall have no dominion.'
My deceased grandmother on my mom's side was a real fairy godmother, who lived to be 102 and who I always feel is looking after me.
In my own life, I find myself doing some task - driving or playing golf - and having a conversation with my mother or father, who are both deceased. I don't know if that means I'm mentally ill, but I suspect lots of people do it. And when I hold that conversation, different images of my parents appear to me.
Flattery and deceit are the darlings of great men, and so with these men spread the butter on thick, if you want to get something out of them, otherwise you'll come home to me with a full belly and an empty purse.
The abortion facility in Texas where I worked for eight years closed after enough workers like me left. They closed because I finally spoke out against the terrible things I saw, the deceit I participated in, and the unsanitary practices common to many abortion facilities.
O Lord, deliver me from the man of excellent intention and impure heart: for the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.
I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me.
It was a dreamlike time for me from December 1997 to March of '98. Before that, I was basically unknown. Then, bang! The starting gun fired, and everybody just started running. It was learn-on-the-job. And there were more opportunities for work than I had time to do them.
I think the Civil Rights Movement changed that trajectory for me. The first thing I did was leave school. I was suspended for my participation in Movement demonstrations in my hometown, December, 1961.
A woman drove me to drink and I didn't even have the decency to thank her.
I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.
Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.
I have solid decent people around me, and I believe that is all it is, because you will get destroyed if you have people bringing you down.
I hope people remember me as a good and decent man. And if they do, then that's success.
My mother taught me what it is to have a sense of humour; my dad, who was a headmaster, everything you need to know about hard work. My dad is the most decent man you could come across.
Pence is far too conservative for me, but by all accounts, he's an intelligent, experienced, decent man with no skeletons in his closet.
