Jews had an outsider's eye on a lot of Western tradition.

We believed that to understand literature, you had to understand its place in history and culture.

The Romantics were whipping boys of the New Criticism, but they appealed to me anyway. I was recalcitrant. It was clear to me that they had thought innovatively.

When something startlingly new comes up, young people, especially, seize it. You can't complain about that. I think its heyday has passed, but it's had an effect and will continue to have an effect.

We worked on solving the problem of voice communications in a noisy military environment. We established military codes that are highly audible and invented selection tests for personnel who had a superior ability to recognize sound in a noisy background.

By instinct and tradition, I don't like the thing. I like to look someone in the eye.