I don’t know who my parents were. I know nothing about my inheritance. I could be Jewish; I could be part Negro; I could be Irish; I could be Russian. I am spiritually a mix anyway, but I did have a solid childhood fortunately, because of some wonderful women who brought me up. I never had a father or a man in the house, and that was a loss...

A group of two dozen nurses completely surrounded by 100,000 unattached American men.

I never wrote anything that was published until I was forty.

About a billion years ago, long before the continents had separated to define the ancient oceans, or their own outlines had been determined, a small protuberance jutted out from the northwest corner of what would later become North America.

A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.

I've spent my life trying to be better than I was, and I am a brother to all who share the same aspiration.

The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.