Mormonism is a male religion, a dream of prophets and patriarchs.

In Mormon society and culture, highest values are placed on hard work, thrift, clean living, obedience to the elders and, above all, on the importance of the family.

’60 Minutes‘ was a disaster for me because it made everybody think that I was the house liberal of CBS, which is the part that I was playing. It was fun for a while.

Evolution is fascinating to watch. To me it is the most interesting when one can observe the evolution of a single man.

People say to me now, ‘Oh, it must have been so glamorous to grow up in hotels, eat in restaurants.’ Of course, we hated it.

In Utah, the American melting pot is unstirred. Three out of four people are Mormons, and they are all here in this bleakly beautiful sanctuary ‘behind the Zion curtain‘ because of religious persecution.

The price of shallow sex may be a corresponding loss of capacity for deep love.

Hair brings one’s self-image into focus; it is vanity’s proving ground. Hair is terribly personal, a tangle of mysterious prejudices

Telephone operators recognize my voice before I give my name, and say, ‘Sock it to Kilpatrick.’

Until quite recently dance in America was the ragged Cinderella of the arts.

Tourists moved over the piazza like drugged insects on a painted plate.

The paradox of Reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind‘s eye.

The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind’s eye.

In a nation of celebrity worshipers, amid followers of the cult of personality, individual modesty becomes a heroic quality. I find heroism in the acceptance of anonymity, in the studied resistance to the normal American tropism toward the limelight.

A handwritten, personal letter has become a genuine modern-day luxury, like a child‘s pony ride.

Every time I get ready to chuck it, I remind myself that I can accomplish a lot in that little minute, and they remember what I say.

Writing about your family is the hardest thing, unless you had the perfect happy family life, which very few of us have had.

Ours is the first society in history in which parents expect to learn from their children, rather than the other way around. Such a topsy-turvy situation has come about at least in part because, unlike the rest of the world, we are an immigrant society, and for immigrants the only hope is in the kids.

Good drama should sandpaper the mind.

When two people marry they become in the eyes of the law one person, and that one person is the husband.

At Gatling-gun tempo word-perfect the first time out. the journalistic equivalent of a high-wire front somersault without a net.

I reserve my greatest admiration for those who continue to struggle to embrace the whole impossible tangle of snakes that is our society; those who fight to identify and strengthen human connections, and defeat polarizing forces that strain to drive us apart.

I couldn’t have made it without knowing how to use laughter to get from one day to the next.

The law changes and flows like water, and the stream of women‘s rights law has become a sudden rushing torrent.

The mark of a true crush… is that you fall in love first and grope for reasons afterward.

Before I ever heard about ’60 Minutes,’ I had been a writer, a columnist for ‘Life’ magazine and for ‘Newsweek’ – that was about as high as you could get in column writing. I care about my writing. I’m not a quack-quack TV journalist.

This is what holidays, travels, vacations are about. It is not really rest or even leisure we chase. We strain to renew our capacity for wonder to shock ourselves into astonishment once again.

Secrecy is never so appealing as in a free society.

Rumor and gossip, like sound itself, appear to travel by wave-effect, sheer preposterosity being no barrier.

The real trouble with the doctor image in America is that it has been grayed by the image of the doctor-as-businessman, the doctor-as-bureaucrat, the doctor-as-medical-robot, and the doctor-as-terrified-victim-of-malpractice-suits.

the metabolism of a consumer society requires it continually to eat and excrete, every day throwing itself away in plastic bags.

What troubles me is not that movie stars run for office, but that they find it easy to get elected. It should be difficult. It should be difficult for millionaires, too.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.