Mrs. Zuppa was coming in from bingo just as I was leaving the building. "Looks like you're going to work," she said, leaning heavily on her cane. "What are you packin'?" "A thirty-eight." "I like a nine-millimeter myself." "A nine's good." "Easier to use a semiautomatic after you've had hip replacement and you walk with a cane," she said. One of those useful pieces of information to file away and resurrect when I turn eighty-three.

I took all of my rejection letters - there must have been thousands of them in a huge box - and I went out on the curb and burned them all, crying.

My mother had been slicing up the chicken. She took a drumstick and dropped it on the floor. She kicked it around a little, picked it up and put it on the edge of the plate. "There," she said, "we'll give him this drumstick." "Deal.

Ranger plays by his own set of rules, and I don't have a complete copy.

I take in a lot of stuff from real life, movies, television, news and it all gets mixed in my head and somehow turns into a story idea.

And something chocolate, of course. A meal was not a meal without some sort of chocolate for desert.

He doesn’t look very smart,” Diesel said. “He’s not even giving me the finger.” “Can monkey’s do that?” Hal asked. Carl gave him the finger. “Cool!” Hal said.