The wise and good are outnumbered a thousand to one by the brutal and stupid.

Once again, we shall have to operate not only outside the box, but outside the room containing the box.

The mandalas were meant to be objects of contemplation, aids to meditation, their proportions magically balanced to purify and calm the mind. To stare at a mandala was to experience, if only briefly, the nothingness that is at the heart of enlightenment.

Steve Forman strafes the south Florida scene with Boca Knights, an outrageously funny mystery novel with a raft of offbeat characters and prose that moves trippingly off the pen. His main man, Eddie Perlmutter, ex-Boston cop attempting semi-retirement in Boca Raton like a fish trying to retire out of the water, is a character for the ages. Carl Hiaasen, watch your back.

I need to write in a small room - the smaller the better. I can't write in a big room where someone might sneak up behind my back.

There are so many journalists out there, I hate to say it, who are lazy and don't do their research - and it shows.

One can reach the gates of hell just as easily by short steps as by large.