“There may be fresh ways of bat­tling out of the terrible contradictions of Third World–style polarization and ex­ploitation — and if there are, the remark­able Poles, if anyone, show promise of finding their way clear to them.”

“The decade began with the fear of the mugger and it ends with fear of the mug­ger, but in the interim a new element of danger has been added.”

“One by one the idols of other nations visited us, but those with­out a Yankee sponsor barely registered as blips on the scale of mass appeal.”

Rappers make their livings being articulate, and there's no one better to articulate the '80s from an Afrikan, youthful, working hip-hop perspective

“Historians will look back on the 1980s with wonder: How was it that America managed to produce and invest so little, and consume so much? How did we let our priorities get so out of line, and the gap between rich and poor grow so wide?”

"Memorials. A new way to be unhappy in a group. I visit a friend who can no longer speak. A few days later he's dead. If you ask after people you haven't seen for a while, be prepared"

“It would be no exaggeration to call the ’80s the decade of Crime as Entertain­ment. An epoch where fascination with ‘reality’ permeated every nook and crev­ice of television.”

Here are letters between two seven-year-old girls about the ’80s. Their names are Zoozoo and Linda and they have parents.

“Everyone hanging out on St. Marks used to look like a Dr. Seuss character. Now St. Marks looks like a movie version of St. Marks. The East Village is turning into a giant mall.”

“In the ’80s, it was ‘Morning in America’ and we woke up to find that our night­mares were real: it became the Decade of the Quick and the Dead.”