Think about all the selfish non-smokers out there, driving around on asphalt, drinking water out of the tap, not even thinking about how smokers' taxes help pay for it all.

Gilles Deleuze believed that every society needed a madman so we could feel better about ourselves. I do my best to fill that role.

Don't try to outguess what's going on in publishing, and write what you want to write.

You do not have to explain every single drop of water contained in a rain barrel. You have to explain one drop-H2O. The reader will get it.

I'm a bad, inconsistent person, but at least I'm not a member of the Tea Party griping incoherently about too much government, but flashing my Medicare card every other day to a doctor because I'm 400 pounds overweight.

I don't smoke because I like to do so, but because it makes me pay cigarette taxes, which helps build roads and water supplies.

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk-away from any open flames-to remind yourself that if you don't write daily, you will get rusty.