What I am finding now is that my audience is getting younger as I get older, which is a very good thing as you know - you don't want them to get older as you get older.

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.

Bridget wondered whether it all came down to the claustrophobic choice between dying beautiful or living ugly.

Dip him in the river who loves water.

Books are the most mannerly of companions accessible at all times in all moods frankly declaring the author's mind without offense.

I want to make music that will make the blood surge in your veins, music that will get people up and dance.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

There was at all events one advantage in the choice of this day to my birth; my birthday throughout the whole of my childhood was a day of public rejoicing.

Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.

Nobody has a perfect life and it's entirely possible that if you want someone else's life they are busy wanting someone else's too–maybe even yours.

Im one step ahead of my past, two steps behind my dream.

My reason for coming out isn't to be some sort of hero.