I spoke to my agent and learned that a Hollywood scout had seen my proposal in one of the publishing houses, and had faxed it to Hollywood, where it was generating a lot of interest

... character reigns preeminent in determining potential.

I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen

Honestly, I expected to get a cold reception because of my subject matter. But when editors took a look at the story I had to tell, and saw that this was not a parochial story at all, they really warmed to it

I got sick when I was 19, and I'd been a really healthy 19-year-old, so I don't have a lot to compare it to. Does it feel like the pain after you give birth? I don't know

Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by their captors and the circumstances in which they are forced to live.

Books on horse racing subjects have never done well, and I am told that publishers had come to think of them as the literary version of box office poison