Today you can buy the Dialogues of Plato for less than you would spend on a fifth of whiskey, or Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the price of a cheap shirt. You can buy a fair beginning of an education in any bookstore with a good stock of paperback books for less than you would spend on a week's supply of gasoline.

One day I was speeding along at the typewriter, and my daughter - who was a child at the time - asked me, "Daddy, why are you writing so fast?" And I replied, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!

The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.

You can't fight the desert... you have to ride with it.

One thing has always been true: That book or that person who can give me an idea or a new slant on an old idea is my friend.

My lady had the body of a siren, the face of a goddess, and the mind of an Armenian camel dealer.

Long ago I learned nothing gets done by just wishing it. You have to do it.