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.

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

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.

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.

Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever pay attention to them and they always love you back.

There are realistic limitations, but it's the unrealistic ones that are malignant to our potential.

Gomers are human beings who have lost what goes into being human beings. They want to die, and we will not let them.

When people call me a role model it puts the fear of god into me, because I feel like I'm destined to fail.

Life is full of miracles, but they're not always the ones we pray for.

Doctors think a lot of patients are cured who have simply quit in disgust.

Rage cannot be hidden, it can only be dissembled. This dissembling deludes the thoughtless, and strengthens rage and adds, to rage, contempt.

When Jett puts my face in his hands and tells me, 'Mommy you're so pretty' or smells me, it's so wonderful.

The only way to stay in fashion is never be in. If you are never in fashion, you are never out of fashion.

We surround ourselves with what is better or see other people as role models. You go, "If they can do this, so can I." That starts to trigger people, as well.