Our sins describe us, and our prohibitions describe our sins.

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.

If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don’t have to say anything. Be friendly and then go doyour best. That will make you special, too!

Islaam is the Name of the Universe. Christ is the Soul, and Abraham, the Foundation — The Rainbow At Midnight

Grief changes shape, but it never ends.

Michael Jackson National African American Art Examiner Series

I don't like going to the studio. It just seems too cold. There's no crowd to react to, or share anything with; it's just talking into a microphone that's going into a computer.

In her new book, Sarah Palin says she once gave up chocolate for an entire year just to prove she could do it. Still think she's not qualified to be President?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and J.F Kennedy were Presidents in very different times.

I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.

A saint realizes that it is God who engineers his circumstances; consequently there are no complaints, only unrestrained surrender to Jesus.

I knew Dionysus must've filled it out, because he stubbornly insisted on getting my name wrong: Dear _______Peter Johnson__________.