Explore Quotes by Shana Alexander

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.

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

Secrecy is never so appealing as in a free society.

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

I couldn't have made it without knowing how to use laughter to get from one day to the next.

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.

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

Every time I get ready to chuck it, I remind myself that I can accomplish a lot in that little minute, and they remember what I say.

'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.

Writing about your family is the hardest thing, unless you had the perfect happy family life, which very few of us have had.

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.'

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.

Before I ever heard about '60 Minutes,' I had been a writer, a columnist for 'Life' magazine and for 'Newsweek' - that was about as high as you could get in column writing. I care about my writing. I'm not a quack-quack TV journalist.

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 graceful Georgian streets and squares, a series of steel engravings under a wet sky.

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

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

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

Hair brings one’s self-image into focus; it is vanity’s proving ground. Hair is terribly personal, a tangle of mysterious prejudices

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.

Between the two poles of whole-truth and half-truth is slung the chancy hammock in which we all rock.