I've always said that the big difference between South America and North America with regard to the native population is that in North America they raped them and killed them, and in South America they raped them and married them. The mix was much greater, and that was very good.

When policemen go to prison in England, they have as bad a time as a pedophile.

Envy never comes to the ball dressed as envy; it comes dressed as high moral standards or distaste for materialism.

I always do my draft in long hand because even the ink is part of the flow.

You can't be up the reader's ass, as many a writer I think is - cute as hell, ingratiating as hell. But that's not loving the reader in the right way. That's toadying to the reader.

It's hard to make progress with grief.

Each life is a game of chess that went to hell on the seventh move(...)