There is a wonderful intelligence to the unconscious. It’s always smarter than we are.

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.

True love doesn’t exist, for, love is always true. If it is not true, then it is not love at all.

A little belief, a little faith, a little hope is sometimes all we need, to see the light.

What to do now, Father? I am going to die like a killer, and I do not even remember killing.”“You can pray, my son. You are in the hands of God now, ” said the good priest.

Simplicity and sexiness, that's what people want. At a price that's not outrageous.

Some stories we know well and some we learn as we go. Being able to shape and share these stories into new perspectives and new ideas is incredibly gratifying.

At an independent label, you have to figure out inventive ways to promote without spending the money.

I don't think I know anyone who has a steady job in Montreal.

The saying, "Practice is everything," is Periander's.

Grime is not like messiness or some fingerprints on a cabinet; it takes a long time to accumulate.

And humility in politics means accepting that one party doesn't have all the answers; recognising that working in partnership is progress not treachery.