I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.

Travel definitely affects me as a writer.

Until the June 1967 war I was completely caught up in the life of a young professor of English. Beginning in 1968 I started to think write and travel as someone who felt himself to be directly involved in the renaissance of Palestinian life and politics.

There are days when I intentionally don't write. For instance I never write when I'm traveling because travel is a situation where I can learn more by looking and listening than by working.

The fact that people will pay you to talk to people and travel to interesting places and write about what intrigues you I am just amazed by that.

I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work.

A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere travels on the ground sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it and has a hard time and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.

I was born to travel and write verse.

To read a writer is for me not merely to get an idea of what he says but to go off with him and travel in his company.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

Every time I write something I think this is the most offensive thing I will ever write. But no. I always surprise myself.

When I write stuff and I help cast it I turn away good people all the time. I may turn them down because this one's too tall and that one doesn't have a high enough voice or this one looks to old to match up with that one - there's a billion reasons not to hire somebody.

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading in order to write. A man will turn over half a library to make a book.

If you're living in your time you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and about all time.

Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very' your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for the Negro I would be thankful the rest of my life.

I take mentoring very seriously and I am on the board of an organization called Girls Write Now where we match teen girls and writing mentors because it changes their lives.

I decided that if I were to write a teen series I'd want to set it in a place that was familiar to me - Manhattan where I'd grown up - and I'd model the characters on myself and my friends.

I think I'm also more open to other writers being present and listening to other opinions whereas before I was going through my angsty teen years while making records.

In spite of advances in technology and changes in the economy state government still operates on an obsolete 1970s model. We have a typewriter government in an Internet age.

I try to write about how we live today how we use language technology our bodies.