When you get older, keeping the private stuff private seems less important.

Donald Westlake's Parker novels are among the small number of books I read over and over. Forget all that crap you've been telling yourself about War and Peace and Proust-these are the books you'll want on that desert island.

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

If you want to write fiction, the best thing you can do is take two aspirins, lie down in a dark room, and wait for the feeling to pass.

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.

And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.

People don't get to change things. Things change people once in a while, but people don't change things.