Americans' distrust of the conspicuously intellectual - a habit we learned, I suppose, on the frontier, but which remains a feature of the national character - has the virtue of puncturing the pretentious and exposing the fake, but it may also have impaired American listeners' patience for music that is especially complex or austere.

You should know that I've been hearing-impaired, not quite since birth, but I've been wearing hearing aids since I was 13, so I'm very conscious of the difficulty of voice communication.

When public access to voting is impaired or when public confidence in voting is diluted democracy suffers and our freedom is less secure.

I learned very early that our health is always impaired by some excess either of food or abstinence and I never had any physician except myself.