Shana Alexander

“Telephone operators recognize my voice before I give my name, and say, 'Sock it to Kilpatrick.'”

“The Mormon belief system unites curiously American pairs of opposites. A relish for the dog-eat-dog practices of the marketplace goes hand in hand with the stern obligation to 'help thy neighbor.'”

“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 difficulty with becoming a patient is that as soon as you get horizontal, part of your being yearns, not for a doctor, but for a medicine man.”

“Letters are expectation packaged in an envelope.”

“'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.”

“The majority of Utah's citizens do not merely approve the death penalty, they demand it - the state religion demands it.”

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

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

“Secrecy is never so appealing as in a free society.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“I have been active as a writer and journalist for nearly forty years. But the number of great reporters I have run across in that time would make, as they say, a slim book. Without question, the top man on my list would be Tommy Thompson.”

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

“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.”

“The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.”

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