If I told you about all the stories I don't tell, I would be violating the very boundaries I set for myself.

I do not outline. There are writers I know and count as my friends who certainly do it the other way but for me part of the adventure is not knowing how it's going to turn out.

Growing up in the fifties and sixties, I can only remember knowing one child, ever, whose parents got a divorce, and hardly any whose mother "worked" at anything besides raising her children.

The painter who feels obligated to depict his subjects as uniformly beautiful or handsome and without flaws will fall short of making art.

More than any other setting - more than battlefields or boardrooms or a spaceship headed for intergalactic travel - I'll put my money on the family to provide an endless source of comedy, tragedy and intrigue.

Those who rhapsodize about the ease and joy of childhood have perhaps forgotten what it's like to be 12 years old.

For 25 years, I did take my responsibilities as a pleaser of others sufficiently seriously.