As frightening as this may sound, what you see in the books is the way I see the world. And so far I haven't seen anything, either in Florida or elsewhere, to dissuade me from it.

That dreadful alligator attack in Orlando would never have happened if Disney had put up real warning signs, like other Florida resorts do. But wild alligators don't fit the Disney image, so they were no proper warnings, and a child died for no reason.

The evening news made her wonder if God was dead; the morning sun made her believe He wasn't.

Every writer scrounges for inspiration in different places, and there's no shame in raiding the headlines. It's necessary, in fact, when attempting contemporary satire. Sharp-edged humor relies on topical reference points.

Here's my rule: You always want to pay cash for your own books, because if they look at the name on the credit card and then they look at the name on the book jacket, then there's this look of such profound sympathy for you that you had to resort to this. It really is withering.

Obviously you have to make a profit to put out a newspaper. I'm not an idiot. But when the margins are in excess of 25 per cent you're talking about greed.

The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind.