Like Neanderthals, men prefer to hunt alone or, if in a pack, at the head of it. Women, whether in the field or in a campfire, are collaborative, and when they hunt...they work together.

We are not buried in history, but surrounded by it. You can't avoid our behavior being shaped by it, to a considerable degree. We have this fantasy that we are free of history. This allows us not to see the circumstances, the historical circumstances of other people.

I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature.

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

Nobody does anything for one reason.

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.

Much more than memoir; it's history.