I can't speak for readers in general, but personally I like to read stories behind which there is some truth, something real and above all, something emotional. I don't like to read essays on literature; I don't like to read critical or rational or impersonal or cold disquisitions on subjects.

I believe very much in sensual powers as a means of obtaining understanding.

As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self-understanding, and this is something that can't be taught.

The kitchen is where we deal with the elements of the universe. It is where we come to understand our past and ourselves.

In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs, having failed at everything else, decided to write a novel. He was then in his mid-thirties, married with two children, barely supporting his family as the agent for a pencil-sharpener business.

I grew up in such a macho family. I had a former Green Beret for a dad, a mom who's really rough-and-tumble, and three very macho brothers.

My family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering.

But that was war. Just about all he could find in its favor was that it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.