Because the writer must be a participant in the scene, while he's writing it — or at least taping it, or even sketching it. Or all three. Probably the closest analogy to the ideal would be a film director/producer who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least a main character.

I am an Addictive Personality, they say, a natural slave to passion - and many Doctors have warned me against it. I am a High-risk Patient.

I guess that's one of the things about growing up in the fifties - it never occurred to me that you wouldn't be at least as successful as your parents.

These things happen. One day you run everything, and the next day you run like a dog.

If we get chased out of Iraq with our tail between our legs, that will be the fifth consecutive Third-world country with no hint of a Navy or an Air Force to have whipped us in the past 40 years.

I miss Nixon. Compared to these Nazis we have in the White House now, Richard Nixon was a flaming liberal.

You almost have to be a rock star to generate the kind of fever you need to survive in American politics.