For an author just starting out, you've got to deliver the goods every year or sooner or people will forget you or you will lose momentum. There is a contract that exists between author and reader.

Marriage is an honorable estate and should not be used simply as an excuse for legal intercourse.

Without a yardstick sometimes the high points can be taken for granted.

Yes, and imagine a world where there were no hypothetical situations.

He spent his life immersed in books to the cost of everything else, even personal relationships. "Friends," he'd once said, "are probably great, but I have forty thousands friends of my own already, and each of them needs my attention.

He was, after all, the ultimate rebel -- it takes a lot of cojones to stand up to Zeus.

That's the thing about destiny: It can't be predicted, and it's usually pretty odd.