You can turn your back on a person, but never turn your back on a drug, especially when its waving a razor sharp hunting knife in your eye.

In the meantime, I would drink, rest, and ponder the meaning of this mob.

I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.

It was the kind of town that made you feel like Humphrey Bogart: you came in on a bumpy little plane, and, for some mysterious reason, got a private room with a balcony overlooking the town and the harbor; then you sat there and drank until something happened.

Marathon running, like golf, is a game for players, not winners. That is why Callaway sells golf clubs and Nike sells running shoes. But running is unique in that the world's best racers are on the same course, at the same time, as amateurs, who have as much chance of winning as your average weekend warrior would scoring a touchdown in the NFL.

I measure my life in pages. If I have pages at dawn, it's been a good night.

Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it.