But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.

So the same cultural and political issues that divided us in 1968 are still dividing us.

A couple of years I taught in graduate programs at NYU and Columbia, in the early eighties.

Storytelling is an ancient and honorable act. An essential role to play in the community or tribe. It's one that I embrace wholeheartedly and have been fortunate enough to be rewarded for.

Motivations are too tangled and complex.

And out of a desire essentially to imitate what I was reading, I began to write, like a clever monkey.

The United States particularly abandoned Liberia after the end of the Cold War.

I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.

Although I still occasionally paint and draw, my life has now been shaped by my writing.

The best thing about writing programs is that it rationalized the apprenticeship of a writer.

Nobody does anything for one reason.

My major allegiance has been to storytelling, not to history.

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

Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.

Chimpanzees are endangered. Severely.

But on the other hand, I don't actively seek out stories or hunt them down.

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.

It's hard to spend years at a time working in total solitude with no reality-check.

But really, it was reading that led me to writing. And in particular, reading the American classics like Twain who taught me at an early age that ordinary lives of ordinary people can be made into high art.

First of all it's usually women who run these higher primate sanctuaries, rarely men. They are white. They come from privileged backgrounds. They are educated.

For almost anyone who chooses to be a writer, since so very few writers are able to learn a living from their work that is equivalent to the living earned by the average dentist or accountant.

I don't want it to be all that self-conscious or artificial, but it really grows out of my having invented myself as a listener so that I could hear her voice.

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.

What I am finding now is that my audience is getting younger as I get older, which is a very good thing as you know - you don't want them to get older as you get older.

John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university.

And there are people who want to be writers because they love to write. And they care.

The 60s passed and faded and I grew older, and in 1987 bought a house in upstate New York, and it turned out that John Brown was buried down the road from my house and that he had lived there longer than anywhere else and his house was still standing.

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever.

I grew up with art from the innocent age of ten - with art, but with no sense of identity.

Death comes not to the living soul, nor age to the loving heart.

I'm very pleased to be here. Let's face it, at my age I'm very pleased to be anywhere.

For example, UNICEF works with governments to change legislation such as in India where a law was passed raising the age of compulsory school completion to keep children in school and away from the workplace for longer.

I figured out it was a social thing, what women were allowed to do. At a very young age, I decided I was not going to follow women's rules.

I wish I knew at 14 not to put much thought into what other people my age said to me, cause we were all looking for the answers. So I wish I knew that other people really don't know any more than you do!

I believe very firmly that gay people of every stripe and age should be role models for all children, and that means interacting with them.

Donner likes what he does and enjoys being on a set. He doesn't have to do it, its not like he has to make the rent. When I get to be his age and still enjoy what I'm doing like him, I'd be lucky.

Does age matter? Time doesn't matter.

I realised from a very early age that God gave me a gift, and that gift was to run, and I wanted to use it to the best of my ability.

Looking back, I think we were all quite mature, surprisingly responsible. In earlier wars, boys of our age had just gone off to raise hell or enlist or both, but we stayed dutifully at our desks doing tomorrow's homework.

This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age.

For me, having a child is a really great responsibility because you've got something there that is depending on you for information and love until a certain age when it goes to school.

I don't think at my age... you can start ruling people out in politics.

I figured my body always would be able to repair itself. I think all of us believe that - until you begin to age and get hit with deteriorating joints.

Another principle is, the deepest affections of our hearts gather around some human form in which are incarnated the living thoughts and ideas of the passing age.

I read. It's also nice for me to get involved in schoolwork, which is a totally different world than acting. It makes me feel like I am doing things that normal people are doing at my age.

When you're my age and you see a story, you better go for it pretty quickly. I'd just like to get a few more novels under my belt.

Hollywood is sexist and age-ist, and that covers all the bases, I guess.