You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.

Disney world is an armpit compared to Montana.

No deliberative body is manifestly less qualified to make decisions about public education than our state Legislature. With a few shining exceptions, most of these clowns don't read, can't write, and clearly can't add.

The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.

A bonus, being a writer, is that the true-life source material is fabulously bizarre. There's so much corruption, violence and free-floating depravity that the well never runs dry, whether you're a novelist, a journalist, or both.

I think it's always good for the author to stay a good cattle prod's distance from the actual moviemaking.

I was born and raised here [in Florida], so I still have tremendous affection for the state - especially the few wild places that haven't disappeared under concrete. What's left is still worth fighting for, and that's why I stay.