I used to go up to her house. She lived upstate [in New York] and I lived in Manhattan; you're living in a lot of noise and my career was being built. For me to spend time with Nina [Simone] is to spend a lot of quiet time.

There is no such thing as writer's block. There is only not enough information. If you can't write, learn something.

Storytelling is how history is passed. It's what our ancestors did, it's what everybody's done. It has to come back into a story because otherwise, it's stuck in this book and it's boring and it's academic and I'm not against intelligence and I'm not against education, I don't want to be misunderstood, but we have tell the stories to our young people a little bit early and history gives us a lot of things.

The nature of tragedy and accident is that we cannot predict.

You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.

Writers ... I think ... live on that fine line between insanity and genius.

The catchword I use with my classes is: The authority of the writer always overcomes the skepticism of the reader.