When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion.

There's so much hate that we direct externally that we forget we have our own psychos. But that's the role of the satirist - you have to examine your own country and say, look!

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.

From my experience, politicians are much more uncomfortable being made fun of than they are being preached at and screeched at - you know, and the soapbox routine. They're much more uneasy knowing they're a target of ridicule.

I've always enjoyed making people laugh. But in order for me to be funny, I have to get ticked off about something.

Bangkok 8 is one of the most startling and provocative mysteries that I've read in years. The characters are marvelously unique, the setting is intoxicating and the plot unwinds in dark illusory strands, reminiscent of Gorky Park. Once I started, I didn't want to put it down.

That's what people do when they find a special place that wild and full of life, they trample it to death.