My wife says, "You're an idiot! Why do you Google your name and all you're doing is looking for trouble?" Because I'm thin-skinned. Because I don't like to be mischaracterized. I just don't. If someone is going to criticize what you've written and you believe in what you've written then you should respond. Now do I sometimes fall in the gutter myself and look silly doing it? Of course. Some battles I win, some battles I lose.

Actually, my dog I think is the only person who consistently loves me all the time.

My grandmother got her law degree from Syracuse University in roughly 1911 and later co-founded with her husband an investment banking firm on Wall Street known as Lebenthal & Co.

I always had a curiosity about Texas. I had a curiosity about small-town life, although, granted, Odessa's not a tiny town.

One of the inspirations for my becoming a writer was the baseball board game Strat-O-Matic.

I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that.

I actually like football a great deal.