One of the things I have tried to do with this book and with all of them really is avoid that simple, easy, reductionist view of motivation and to show we do things for a complex net of reasons, a real braid of reasons.

Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.

One of the things I have tried to do with this book and with all of them really is avoid that simple, easy, reductionist view of motivation and to show we do things for a complex net of reasons, a real braid of reasons.

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.

Boys like it when you talk to them as if they were grown men—at least he always did when he was a kid—because they pretend that’s what they are anyhow, grown-up men, and they do it for their entire lives.

If you are born black, it is better to be born now than in any other time in United States history. My grandson is black. His life is a different life than if he had been born when I was born.

Choose your agent as carefully as you would choose your accountant or lawyer. Or dentist.