I’ve tried writing and the sentences come out fine, but I write a few pages and I don’t want to go on.

Booze and tobacco and lots of sex. It keeps a lad young.

The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one.

As my late mother famously observed, the one thing to be said for growing old is that every year there are a few more things I don’t have to give a rat’s ass about.

If you cannot stand a spoon upright in the cup, then the coffee is too weak.

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city... But there is one thing about it. Once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.

I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.