Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field.

The eleventh commandment of a motion picture negotiation: Thou shalt not take less than thy last deal.

There are two types of people ... the scrutinizers and the scrutinized

Violence is the way stupid people try to level the playing field.

I started all over again on page 1, circling the 262 pages like a vulture looking for live flesh to scavenge.

New York is at once cosmopolitan and parochial, a compendium of sentimental certainties. It is in fact the most sentimental of the world's great cities - in its self-congratulation a kind of San Francisco of the East.

Novels do take charge of the writer, and the writer is basically a kind of sheepdog just trying to keep things on track.