You learn this great lesson of life: it's not about me. It's just not. The matter of talent-which seemed so important to you when you were young-is not of great importance. We're simply a conduit. We take things out of the air into us and put them in the form of stories. That's pretty much it.

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.

No innocent man buys a gun, and no happy man writes his memoirs.

Sex is not a mechanical act that fails for lack of technique, and it is not a performance by the male for the audience of the female; it is a continuum of attraction that extends from the simplest conversation and the most innocent touching through the act of coitus.

A romp in the hay lingers like the first line of a song, but your true love is the one you make a life with and write more than a line about, you write a whole book.

Boys, the first drink is a boon, the second is a gamble, the third is poor judgment, and then the rate of descent gets steep

My ancestors were Puritans from England. They arrived here in 1648 in the hope of finding greater restrictions than were permissible under English law at that time.