The New York Daily News suggested that my biggest war crime was not killing myself like a gentleman. Presumably Hitler was a gentleman.

Somebody realized, hey, students are printing dummy ads and dummy news stories, why don't they really print something. So there was the Shortridge Daily Echo, and a hell of a lot of writers have come out of Shortridge on that account. The head writer of the I Love Lucy show, Madelyn Pugh, was a schoolmate of mine. Dan Wakefield. Writing was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

You can't help it but you were born without a heart. At least you tried to believe what the people with hearts believed — so you were a good man just the same.

As in my other works of fiction: All persons living and dead are purely coincidental, and should not be construed. No names have been changed to protect the innocent. Angels protect the innocent as a matter of Heavenly routine.

Honest to God, Bill, the way things are going, all I can think of is that I'm a character in a book by somebody who wants to write about somebody who suffers all the time.

I think William Shakespeare was the wisest human being I ever heard of. To be perfectly frank, though, that's not saying much.

Much of the conversation in the country consisted of lines from television shows, both past and present.