If for some reason you are unsure where to go, all you have to do is stand there looking lost, and within seconds a helpful New Yorker will approach to see if you have any "spare" change.

One key lesson of history is that virtually anything, including afternoon or evening thundershowers, causes Germany to invade Belgium.

Dear Hotel People: We don't need a cheeseball clock-radio. WE NEED PLACES TO PLUG STUFF IN. Thank you.

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.

I read Warren Zevon's bizarre biography, "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead." His wife, Crystal Zevon, posthumously published a journal he wrote and some interviews with ex-band members. Like [Keith] Richards's book "Life," it's brutally honest.

Auto racing is boring except when a car is going at least 172 miles per hour upside down.

Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.