I learned a lot from Vietnam veterans, especially as some of them turned against their own war.

When I was still in my psychiatric residency training in New York City, I was subjected to the doctor draft of that time, during the early fifties, at the time of the Korean War.

I never quite envisioned myself a proper doctor under that white coat, but I was interested in the idea of healing and in the psychological dimension rather early on.

Sometimes its said that psychiatrists are doctors who are frightened by the sight of blood. I might have fallen into that category.

I'm a Brooklyn boy. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised there, and spent most of my childhood there.

Every adult in the world has some sense that he or she might be obliterated at any time by these weapons that we have created.

I did the first study because I had been exposed to something that I took to be important and interesting - this thought reform process - in the military.

And I was troubled by the heavy-handed prose of so much psychoanalytic writing, which seemed drowned in its own concepts.

Yes, I've been very preoccupied with the survivor all through my work.

As a kid I was fascinated with sports, and I loved sports more than anything else. The first books I read were about sports, like books about Baseball Joe, as one baseball hero was called.

I don't have the feeling that as a very young person I read books that absolutely made their mark on my mind.

He must trust, and he must have faith. And so he builds, because what is building, and rebuilding and rebuilding again, but an act of faith?

The writer who offends nobody has nothing to say.

If you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn more about it.

There are no plans that always work in life. For me, the secret to happiness is being positive and looking at the brighter side of my life.

I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.

I remember the will said, 'May God thy gold refine.' That must be from the Bible." "Shakespeare," Turtle said. All quotations were either from the Bible or Shakespeare.

Religion was no cure for dysfunction.

The only deadline is the one I give myself.

Yes, the divorce was difficult. It was difficult.

I grew up reading 'The Jungle Books' and loving them.