My ancestors were Freethinkers - and that's what I am, except we're called secular humanists now.

The mountebank told them that God was surely trying to kill them, possibly because He was through with them, and that they should have the good manners to die. This, as you can see, they did.

I am simply impressed by the unexpected insights which shower down on me when my job is to imagine, as contrasted with the woodenly familiar ideas which clutter my desk when my job is to tell the truth.

She broke my heart. I didn't like that much. But that was the price. In this world, you get what you pay for.

During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.

Educate yourself, welcome life's messiness, read Chekhov, avoid becoming an architect at all costs.

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.