The Best Thing About Writing

Much More Than Memoir; It's History.

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.

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.

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.

One Of The Most Difficult Things To Say To Another Person Is, 'i Hope That You Will Love Me For No Good Reason.' But It Is What We All Want And Rarely Dare To Say To One Another, To Our Children, To Our Parents And Mates, To Our Friends, And To Strangers, Especially To Strangers Who Have Neither Good, Nor Bad Reasons To Love Us.