I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature.

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.

For me, education—both teaching and learning—is about building relationships and developing rapport with students, with parents, and with faculty.

A loving heart is the source of all happiness.

All that matters is that I stay healthy.

A clear conscience is, for me, an occupied conscience-never empty-the conscience of a man at work until his last breath.

The sacred demands the violation of what is normally the object of terrified respect.

You can't have three defenders moving up and one going back. The decisions a team makes are important. As a whole.

I'm not going to count the dollars before they've come in.

It's a great time to be alive and be a computer weenie.

I got one of the illest crews in NY but when I travel it's mostly me and my girl, me and my kids or me and one or two of my dudes but the majority of the time its just me.

The dogmatist within is always worse than the enemy without.