The Pivot Questionnaire that I ask other people, when I have on rare occasion answered it, the answer to the question, "What turns you on?" Is words. Not mine, other people's. Words, words, words, that's what turns me on.

Our language, one of our most precious natural resources, deserves at least as much protection as our woodlands, streams and whooping cranes.

If I were to ask you for example right now to go back with me and define those moments in your life that shaped you as a person and you began to reexamine them, something would happen.

I love writing. I like reading, other people, not myself.

A good day's writing, when I turn off my computer after I know that I've written okay, or as well as I can write, that's a day well spent.

I would say that writing, both the act of writing, and of course reading of other people's work is, for me, supreme joy.

I'll miss it until the day I die, and I'm convinced to this day that I can get on a horse and jump a course of fences satisfactorily. It doesn't leave you.