You try to fill up your time with trying to think about other things: what you’re going to do on the weekend or about your family. You have to use yo… - Studs Terkel

We thought of the poor, at that time, as quite divorced from us, who were not poor. By the exercise of one’s charity, life could be made all right. You would always have the poor with you, they were the unfortunate, and you made donations. You could handle them. It was mildly unpleasant, but not fundamentally upsetting. Now, for the first time, we face the dreadful reality that we are not separated. They are us. They are something we have made. There is no conceivable way today to say: Fish, and you’ll be all right. In hurt, in anguish, in shock, we are becoming aware that it is ourselves, who have to be found wanting, not the poor.

I think everybody should have a job, and the Government should see that they get a job. That WPA deal, that was a darn good idea. I was one of the lucky guys that didn’t need it, but this is what I believe. Everybody should work, but do what they want. I don’t mean this as a communist thing, maybe it’s socialism, I don’t know. Like I’m a musician. Just pay me to do concerts for nothin’. Let people listen for nothing. The Government should work something out so people have something to do. There are so many things to be done in these cities. You feel much better if you’re workin’ instead of gettin’ a handout. You’ll get self-respect, which is number one. Drama, dancing schools, musicians. . .. You could give guys like me jobs as teachers, to teach jazz. So you perpetuate what I’ve learned in my lifetime. You could give that to some younger person and let them carry on, make their own choice, but at least they’d have the background. It’s like studying history. It’s like being part of history. . . .

We had to go to stew school for five weeks. We’d go through a whole week of make-up and poise. I didn’t like this. They make you feel like you’ve never been out in public. They showed you how to smoke a cigarette, when to smoke a cigarette, how to look at a man’s eyes. Our teacher, she had this idea we had to be sexy. One day in class she was showing us how to accept a light for a cigarette from a man and never blow it out. When he lights it, just look in his eyes. It was really funny, all the girls laughed.