We know that people we love are both good and bad, but we expect strangers to be one or the other.

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.

A tie is what you get after ice cubes have wrestled with hot water.

My bank does not accept likes.

I think it's important to understand that North Carolina has been ground zero for conservative backlash.

I'm a comic book artist. So I think to myself, what do I like to draw? I like to draw hot chicks, fast cars and cool guys in trench coat. So that's what I write about.

Coming from California and growing up where I did, I've always had a fondness for and innate sensitivity to light, texture, and warmth.

[My son] Michael came along and he played a little bit of everything. He went to Georgia Tech on a golf scholarship.

How precious a book is in light of the offering, in the light of the one who has the privilege of this offering. The library tells you of this offering

Under capitalism everybody provides for their own needs by serving others.

Tennis is a world out of touch with reality

I came to realize this weird projection: you are much more passionate about hating something outside of you when you know that something is also in you.