Nobody does anything for one reason.

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.

Knowledge is more important than capital. Lack of capital is a common excuse for not starting a business venture.

The end of exile is the end of being.

There are more gluttons than drunkards in hell.

She wasn't just beautiful. She was like the sun coming up: coming up giggling. She was giggling as if she had just remembered something funny.

Who you spend your life with-much more so than how you choose to spend it-is the most important decision you can make. Do it right. That's the best advice I can give you.

I don't like to be pigeonholed; I don't like when people won't see me for something because they don't think I can do it. I always feel like, at least give me the shot.

Falling is one of the ways of moving.

Constant happiness is the philosopher's stone of the soul.

Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button.

A diplomatic peace is not yet the real peace. It is an essential step in the peace process leading towards a real peace.