Blank on Blank

"A literal reading of the Bible simply is a mistake; I mean it’s just wrong" - Carl Sagan on October 4, 1985, as told to Studs Terkel.

"The key was somehow to know what was important and what was not important, what was exciting, because I can’t learn everything." - Richard Feynman in 1966

"I must reorganize the environment of man by which then greater numbers of men can prosper." - Buckminster Fuller in 1965, as told to Studs Terkel

"I have to make my life worth saving, and each day you spend as if it would be your last" - Dame Stephanie Shirley in 2010 from an oral history at the British Library.

"Animals were my passion from even before I could speak apparently. When I was about 10, 11 I fell in love with Tarzan" - Jane Goodall, as told to Ira Flatow in 2002

"Everything in my mind works like a search engine set for the image function." - Temple Grandin in 2008, from an oral history at Colorado State University

“Any man who really has faith in himself will be dubbed arrogant by his fellows” - Frank Lloyd Wright in 1957, as told to Mike Wallace

“I wish that there had been another woman on my flight. I think it would have been a lot easier.” - Sally Ride in 1983. Interviewed by Gloria Steinem.

“My family was shocked when I came home with a volume of Hemingway … There was a price to be paid for being interested in fiction.” - Garrison Keillor in 1994

"I feel more alive now than I ever have in my life. I have a chance to live, as I've dreamed." - Nina Simone in July, 1968. Lilian Terry had a national radio show in Italy--everyone from Ray Charles to Duke Ellington appeared on her show--and there was one person she always wanted to interview: Nina Simone.

In November 1970, Kurt Vonnegut walked into a class room at NYU. He was a guest speaker that day. He’d prepared some handwritten notes on what he wanted to say: there were his thoughts on the art of writing, his childhood, the death of his parents.

"I‘m just an obnoxious guy who can make it appear charming, that’s what they pay me to do" - Bill Murray in October 1988. T.J. English was tasked with writing a profile of Bill Murray for Irish America magazine.