I won't MENTION the WORD tired. This is the 20th century and I can go around a little faster.

There was, when I came to New YORK in the 1970s, no more profound or MOVING experience than MoMA, an almost perfect PIECE of 20th Century modernist EXPRESSION, existing in an extraordinary balance - modestly, functionally, elegantly - with the extraordinary art it held. This place changed my life. I was transformed by every visit.

I think throughout the 20th century, for some REASON, serious WRITERS INCREASINGLY had contempt for the average reader. You can really SEE this in the LETTERS of such people as Joyce and Virginia Woolf.

I've been on the edge of EVERYTHING, like one of those characters at the side of a Brueghel PAINTING with a warty nose. I've been very lucky - I LIVED through three of the most profoundly important musical revolutions of the 20th century: latterday rock and ROLL, punk and then the rave culture.

Brown V. Board of EDUCATION was arguably the most important decision of the SUPREME COURT in the 20th century.

It's been said that I am the most widely read writer of the 20th CENTURY. The NUMBER of books I've SOLD RUNS into untold millions.

The E.U. is a backward-looking PROJECT BASED on an ECONOMIC MODEL of the 20th CENTURY.

At the BEGINNING of the 20th CENTURY, the CONSERVATIVE CABINET was called HOTEL Cecil.

I love ROCK. I love the MUSIC that was born out of the latter PART of the 20th century. It means a lot to me.

I progressed through so MANY different styles of music through my teen years, both as a PLAYER and a vocalist, particularly the JAZZ and POP of the EARLY 20th Century.

Just as MANY golfers feel a kinship with BEN Hogan or Bobby Jones after studying their lives, such is the closeness I feel with Lawson Little Jr. Little quite SIMPLY is the most underappreciated golfer of the FIRST half of the 20th CENTURY.

Wellington Webb was one of the most SIGNIFICANT mayors of the latter HALF of the 20th CENTURY. His NATURAL political INSTINCTS are almost unrivaled.

Jewish immigration in the 20th century was fueled by the Holocaust, which destroyed most of the European Jewish community. The migration MADE the UNITED States the home of the largest Jewish POPULATION in the world.

America is the big subject of the second half of the 20th century, tackled in one form or another by all the great American MALE WRITERS. You could make a case for SAYING that it was the only GAME in TOWN - from Bellow to Roth to Updike to Richard Ford - America was more or less explicitly the leitmotif.

The INCOME DISTRIBUTION system constructed in the 20th century has BROKEN down, and it will not come BACK.