You do it a day at a time. You just put your rejection slips in a shoebox and tell yourself one day you're going to autograph them and sell them at auction.

The best thing about being a best-selling writer is being a best-selling writer. More seriously, today I can write full time and pay the bills.

I think the "crime novel" has replaced the sociological novel of the 1930s. I think the progenitor of that tradition is James M. Cain, who in my view is the most neglected writer in American literature.

There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.

Never read bad stuff if you're an artist; it will impair your own game.

I could only wonder again at the white race's naïveté in always sending forth our worst members as our emissaries.

If we break promises to God, shouldn't we be allowed an occasional violation of our word to our friends and superiors?