There were creative-writin g teachers long before there were creative-writin g courses, and they were called and continue to be called editors.

Only in books do we learn what’s really going on.

It is, in the imagination of combat's fans, the divinely listless loveplay that follows the orgasm of victory. It is called 'mopping up.

Literature is by definition opinionated. It is bound to provoke the arguments in many quarters, not excluding the hometown or even the family of the author.

One [television] program was an interminable exploration of the question: can a woman with a low I.Q. be happily married to a man with a high one? The answer seemed to be yes and no.

People who are wary of what they might find in a book if they opened one are right to be.

I chose cultural anthropology, since it offered the greatest opportunity to write high-minded balderdash.