In Spain, attempting to obtain a chicken salad sandwich, you wind up with a dish whose name, when you look it up in your Spanish-English dictionary, turns out to mean: Eel with big abcess.

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.

The question is, why are politicians so eager to be president? What is it about the job that makes it worth revealing, on national television, that you have the ethical standards of a slime-coated piece of industrial waste?

Advice to expectant mothers: you must remember that when you are pregnant, you are eating for two. But you must remember that the other one of you is about the size of a golf ball, so let's not go overboard with it. I mean, a lot of pregnant women eat as though the other person they're eating for is Orson Welles.

We have always had dogs, and they have faithfully performed many valuable services for us, such as: 1. Peeing on everything. 2. When we're driving in our car, alerting us that we have passed another dog by barking real loud in our ears for the next 114 miles. 3. Trying to kill the Avon lady.

Remember: What dad really wants is a nap. Really.

There is nothing as relaxing as being out on the open sea, listening to the waves and the wind and the sails and voices downstairs yelling "HOW DO YOU FLUSH THESE TOILETS?"