As part of my research for An Anthology of Authors' Atrocity Stories About Publishers, I conducted a study (employing my usual controls) that showed the average shelf life of a trade book to be somewhere between milk and yoghurt.

What campaigns are for is weeding out the people who, for one way or another, weren't making it for the long haul.

There's always a source for humor.

Do my ears deceive me, or can I actually hear the sounds of worms turning? You say a turning worm makes no sound? But how about a chorus of turning worms?

There is no question that Rumanian-Jewish food is heavy. One meal is equal in heaviness, I would guess, to eight or nine years of steady mung-bean eating.

I like chili, but not enough to discuss it with someone from Texas.

As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.