“Oral traditions going back a long, long time, which I inherited by osmosis.”

When a monkey nibbles on a weenis, it’s funny in any language.

A city involves biomass. And biomass gets to me.

The job of a storyteller is to speak the truth. But what we feel most deeply can’t be spoken in words alone.

I was more inclined to think of it as “writer’s impatience”, and to follow Arthur Koestler’s dictum: “Soak; and wait.

When you start, the world of publishing seems like a great cathedral citadel of talent, resisting attempts to let you inside.

She wants to be flowers, but you make her owls.

I wish Monkeys could Skype. Maybe one day.

You must not complain, then, if she goes hunting.

Possessive parents rarely live long enough to see the fruits of their selfishness.

Everything I have ever written has been in the same chair, in the same room.

Ive learned never to try and force words to come.

… I had never given much credence to the phenomenon of “writer’s block”.

It isn’t like that at all. It may be more difficult now, and take longer than when I started to write, but there’s a great, empty warehouse out there looking for simple talent.

My great-grandfather was a self-taught man, and his library was extraordinary. I read the lot.

My attitude is that if anybody of any age wants to read a book, let them, but I do think that no child would want to read Boneland.

At this level, only images connect. And here, story becomes symbol; symbol is myth. And myth is truth.

If I use the media, even with tricks, to publicize a black youth being shot in the back in Teaneck, New Jersey.

Most important, they expect to bounce back and feel confident that they will.

Evangelicals catapulted George W. Bush back to the White House.

We won`t back down! We won`t be trumped!

Donald Trump fired back at democratic Congressman John Lewis after Lewis said he did not see Trump as a legitimate president.

Help one kid at a time. He’ll maybe go back and help a few more.

The next thing I am doing is moving back home to Minnesota and getting involved in politics. I’m looking at a run for Senate in 2008, but in the meantime I am focused on knitting together the progressive network in the upper Midwest.

If you’d done a good job you’d just step back and let all these different chemistries interact and let it go.