When the biggest, richest, glassiest buildings in town are the banks, you know that town's in trouble.

It is true that some of my fiction was based on actual events. But the events took place after the fiction was written.

Henry James was our master of periphrasis -- the fine art of saying as little as possible in the greatest number of words.

A life without tragedy would not be worth living.

Humankind will not be free until the last Kremlin commissar is strangled with the entrails of the last Pentagon chief of staff.

I want my body to help fertilize the growth of a cactus or cliff rose or sagebrush or tree.

Writers should avoid the academy. When a writer begins to accept pay for talking about words, we know what he will produce soon: nothing but words.