I never send a story off until I have read it aloud to at least two or three people. Because when I read - and I don't need their criticism, what I need is my own - when I read it aloud, there is a flow, there is a poetry to it.

The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.

K is for "Kenghis Khan"; He was a very nice person. History has no record of him. There is a moral in that, somewhere.

In my ugly, elitist opinion we are not all entitled to voice our opinions, we are entitled to pass along our informed opinions.

There in the midst of the Amazon Jungle, Simon Haskell has cobbled up for himself a replica of an Art Deco salon.

It is not merely enough to love literature if one wishes to spend one's life as a writer. It is a dangerous undertaking on the most primitive level. For, it seems to me, the act of writing with serious intent involves enormous personal risk. It entails the ongoing courage for self-discovery. It means one will walk forever on the tightrope, with each new step presenting the possiblity of learning a truth about oneself that is too terrible to bear.

I usually say I write for the smartest, cleverest, wittiest audience I know, and that's me.