Motivations are too tangled and complex.

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.

When you deeply and completely love yourself, you find there is nothing to forgive because everyone and everything has contributed to who you are now.

An old librarian once said to me, " whatever we deal with, coming here is always a visual reward.

If you think you can you can. And if you think you can't you're right.

The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

Everything was quiet, as if the silence was listening.

Some people called me a fascist. That's mostly over, but there will be more attacks from the unions.

AI is a bridge between art and science.

I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.

Foul words is but foul wind, and foul wind is but foul breath, and foul breath is noisome; therefore I will depart unkissed.