If you dedicate your attention to discipline in your life you become smarter while you are writing than while you are hanging out with your pals or in any other line of work.

A couple of years I taught in graduate programs at NYU and Columbia, in the early eighties.

John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university.

Like Neanderthals, men prefer to hunt alone or, if in a pack, at the head of it. Women, whether in the field or in a campfire, are collaborative, and when they hunt...they work together.

Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.

Loyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.

For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant.

Chimpanzees are endangered. Severely.

Let the truth take care of itself, I decided. It's done all right on its own so far.

The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer.

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded upon the manners of the nation

The book: an umbrella against ignorance

The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.

I really thought that love would save us all.

'The whole world loves a lover' is an interesting theory, but a very bad legal defense.

Me. I like to have fun. I'm like a kid in a candy story out there.

Being charming takes time and effort, and I am busy.

I don't seek, I find.

Who am I to tamper with a masterpiece?

It’s interesting how something that comes so easily to one person can be so impossible for someone else.