The trouble with aggressive nonsmokers is that they feel they are doing you a favor by not allowing you to smoke. They seem to think that one day you'll look back and thank them for those precious fifteen seconds they just added to your life. What they don't understand is that those are just fifteen more seconds you can spend hating their guts and plotting revenge.

It make one's mouth hurt to speak with such forced merriment.

I've never written about sex in my diary. Like if you read my diary, you wouldn't think I'm a virgin, but you would have no idea what it is that I've actually ever done.

I like books on tape, and will listen to just about anything.

No one reads to hear someone complain about the weather or how poorly their children are behaving. You have to give the readers a reason to turn the page. As a writer you have to invite someone to turn the page. And that is a skill you have to refine. That is why you have to read. You have to read to learn what it is that makes people turn the page.

There is still the outside world to contend with. A world of backfiring cars, and their human equivalents.

I started writing when I was twenty. My first book came out when I was thirty-five. But I never expected that it would happen quickly.