It is a sobering thought that Gomer Pyle and the Beverly Hillbillies may be among our chief interstellar emissaries.

The reason we write fiction is because it's so much easier to exist spending part of each day in an imaginary world.

You are better than you think.

Unhappy failures need not apply.

I have been a writer since 1949. I am self-taught. I have no theories about writing that might help others. When I write, I simply become what I seemingly must become. I am six feet two and weigh nearly two hundred pounds and am badly coordinated, except when I swim. All that borrowed meat does the writing. In the water I am beautiful.

There is no way a beautiful woman can live up to what she looks like for any appreciable length of time.

Plato says that the unexamined life is not worth living. But what if the examined life turns out to be a clunker as well?