Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison

This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind.

For me, being a writer was never a choice. I was born one. All through my childhood I wrote short stories and stuffed them in drawers. I wrote on everything. I didn't do my homework so I could write

The biggest problem has been exhaustion. I've spent about 6 of the last 14 years completely bedridden.

While it's really hard to do, at the same time, I'm escaping my body, which I really want to do. I'm living someone else's life. I get very intensely into the story, into the interviews and the research. I'm experiencing things along with my subjects. I have a freedom I don't have in my physical life

For 'Seabiscuit,' I interviewed 100 people I never met.

Fatigue is what we experience, but it is what a match is to an atomic bomb.