I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

I'm saying with very few exceptions nothing lasts forever, and among those exceptions, no work or thought of man is numbered.

I think we need politicians; we need people who want to serve.

I just come up with the stories and write them as well as I can. There's not really a great deal of strokey-beard thinking going on.

Anyway, you can't leave her like that. You can't do that to the woman. She doesn't deserve it; nobody does. You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would still know she was part of you.

The bomb lives only as it is falling.

I love writing and can't imagine not being able to do it. I want an easy life and if it had been difficult I wouldn't be doing it. I do admire writers who do it even though it costs them.