With a novel, you have the reader with you a lot longer, and you owe him a lot more. Obviously you have to have a plot - I say "obviously," although I think a lot of fiction doesn't, and nothing seems to happen. But to me, there should be something that happens, and it should be at least vaguely plausible. And because the readers are going to be with these characters for a long time, you have to get to know them and like them and want to know what happens to them.

His body rigid with terror as he waited for the savages to something horrible to him—bash his head with clubs, or stab him with spears, or… …or tap him on the shoulder.

I took an estimated two thousand years of high school French, and when I finally got to France, I discovered that I didn't know one single phrase that was actually useful in a real-life French situation.

Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask whether your country has been inhaling paint-thinner fumes.

Note that both of these papers [the New York Post and the New York Daily News] are big sellers in a city whose residents like to go around saying they'd never live anyplace else on account of they'd miss the opera.

Recently I began to feel this void in my life, even after meals, and I said to myself, "Dave, all you do with your spare time is sit around and drink beer. You need a hobby." So I got a hobby. I make beer.

The Sixties are now considered a historical period, just like the Roman Empire.