Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.

I've just finished my next collection, Possible Side Effects, and I'm now working on a collection of holiday stories as well as a memoir about my relationship with my father.

I never could have written the screenplay because I would have been forced to learn new software and I can't learn one more thing.

My instinct was always have your gun in your hand. Especially when you are telling somebody to do something. But, in fact, the police academy discourages this. They feel your gun should rarely, if ever, be brought out of its holster. Most certainly not when children are involved, which is exactly when I saw myself using my gun most often. A truant teenager loitering outside a movie theater is going to be far more motivated to return to school when he has the barrel of a .45 pressed against his cheek.

If I were a serial killer, I would not be the kind that stabs and then eats the victim. I would be the kind that hides in a tree and shoots at the aerobics class.

There's never a false note in a Berg novel.

Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. "My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that's all," he explained. But we knew this was a lie. Glen's parents just wrapped a couple of his Christmas presents in birthday-themed wrapping paper, stuck some candles in a supermarket cake, and had a dinner of Christmas leftovers.