When the beer is gone, so are they -- flexing their cars on up the boulevard.

Obviously, in journalism, you're confined to what happens. And the tendency to embellish, to mythologize, it's in us. It makes things more interesting, a closer call. But journalism taught me how to write a sentence that would make someone want to read the next one.

I leave a lot out when I tell the truth

I'm not good at small talk; I'm not good at big talk; and medium talk just doesn't come up.

The only time the word baby doesn't scare me is the time that it should, when it is what a man calls me.

I know when a story is finished when there is not a single thing more I can think to do to it. And since I know at the start what the last line will be, I know when I've reached that point as logically as I can that it's finished. As for the rewriting-it's not foolproof, of course, but if you're honest about having thought of every possibility and you still come back to what you have, what more can you do?

For peace of mind, I will lie about any thing at any time.