Luck can't last a lifetime unless you die young.

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.

We writers are a crazy group. I can't think of any other profession where the actual work is deep within, uncomfortable, and wanting out.

Oh, Micheal darling!""Don't call me darling, I'm a driving instructor!

Because, Petronella - it's something in his soul. It's something in his soul and you can't get it out.

There is no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.

Ah, what happiness it is to be with people who are all happy, to press hands, press cheeks, smile into eyes.

Words sing. They hurt. They teach. They sanctify. They were man's first, immeasurable feat of magic. They liberated us from ignorance and our barbarous past.

Sense is a line, the mind is a circle. Sense is like a line which is the flux of a point running out from itself, but intellect like a circle that keeps within itself.

Wonka: But, Charlie, don't forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted. Charlie: What happened? Wonka: He lived happily ever after.

Being a star is an agent's dream, not an actor's.

I don't want to make the wrong mistake.