I owe the little formal education I got to my drama teacher, Mr. Pickett, who got us to read Shakespeare, Moliere, and other classics.

If you don't like the President, it costs you 90 bucks to fly to Washington to picket. If you don't like the governor, it costs you 60 bucks to fly to Albany to picket. If you don't like me - 90 cents.

There have been times when I've felt inappropriately emotional. I remember making 'The Most Hated Family in America' about the Westboro Baptist Church, and being on the way to a funeral of a U.S. soldier with the Phelps family; they were going to picket the funeral.

I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns to fly.

You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people, for the rights of workers, and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too.

But picketing - picketing for or against something, and handing out literature - these are conspicuously formal actions. They have to be understood as indirect communication.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

I can't give you the white picket fence, and if I did, you'd set it on fire.

If you don't like the President it costs you 90 bucks to fly to Washington to picket. If you don't like the Governor it costs you 60 bucks to fly to Albany to picket. If you don't like me 90 cents.

My dreams were always small and puny. All I ever needed was a little house with a little picket fence by the sea. Little did I know that I would live in Malacanang Palace for 20 years and visit all the major palaces of mankind. And then also meet ordinary citizens and the leaders of superpowers.

You want to shut up every Negro who has the courage to stand up and fight for the rights of his people for the rights of workers and I have been on many a picket line for the steelworkers too.

But picketing - picketing for or against something and handing out literature - these are conspicuously formal actions. They have to be understood as indirect communication.

Really each era has its own false nostalgia. We all put a picket fence up around something. For my generation it was the '50s and for other generations it will be something else. Change is scary for everyone as is complexity contradiction and an uncertain future.