(1912–2008)
U.S. author, oral historian, and actor
Studs Terkel
When [Billie Holiday] went into “Willow, Weep for Me,” you wept. You looked about and saw that the few other customers were also crying in their beer and shot glasses. Nor were they that drunk. Something was still there, that something that distinguishes an artist from a performer: the revealing of self. Here I be. Not for long, but here I be. In sensing her mortality, we sensed our own.
Describing Billie Holiday, in Talking to Myself: A Memoir of My Times (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 226.
I call myself a radical conservative. What’s that? Well, let’s analyze it. Go to the dictionary. Radical: One who gets to the roots of things. And I’m a conservative because I want to conserve the green of the grass, the potability of drinking water, the first amendment of the Constitution and whatever sanity we have left.
“What I’ve Learned: Studs Terkel,” by Cal Fussman, Esquire, November 6, 2008.