Let me say first that reading is my favorite pastime, bar none. If I couldn't read, I don't know what I'd do. But as a writer, it's both a blessing and a curse. You absorb technique as you go along.

I'm very optimistic. I think if you would describe me, my pretty consistent affect is that I'm a pretty happy person.

Sure smokers have made personal choices. And they pay for those choices every day, whether sitting through an airline flight dyingfor a smoke, or dying for a smoke in the oncology wing of a hospital. The tobacco companies have not paid nearly enough for the killing.

There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.

People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs.

Adolescence is a tough time for parent and child alike. It is a time between: between childhood and maturity, between parental protection and personal responsibility, between life stage- managed by grown-ups and life privately held.

I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and one of the things I like to say is that one of the biggest impediments I had to becoming a successful writer is I had a very happy childhood.