I have no known marketable skills.

If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers.

If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all.

For a long while, I found Parker impossible. He went away for 23 years. I tried to bring him back a few times, and I sort of figured out where he came from, why he went away, and why he came back. The thing that I have to tap into for Parker is in some way the outsider. If I can tap into the outsider, I can write about Parker, and if I can't, I can't.

Parker wasn't supposed to be a series. He was supposed to be one book, and if he was only going to be in one book, I didn't worry about it. And then an editor at Pocket Books said "Write more books about him." So I didn't go back at that point and give him a first name. If I'd known he would've been a series, I would've done two things differently. First, I would've given him a first name because that means for 27 books, I've had to find some other way to say, "Parker parked the car."

What advice I would give to anybody about anything. Life is a slow-motion avalanche, and none of us are steering." (When asked in an interview about what question he's tired of being asked.)

Santa Claus is a god. He's no less a god than Ahura Mazda, or Odin, or Zeus. Think of the white beard, the chariot pulled through the air by a breed of animal which doesn't ordinarily fly, the prayers (requests for gifts) which are annually mailed to him and which so baffle the Post Office, the specially-garbed priests in all the department stories. And don't gods reflect their creators' society? The Greeks had a huntress goddess, and gods of agriculture and war and love. What else would we have but a god of giving, of merchandising, and of consumption?