I'm going to have to be impressed and feel confident in the people I'm handing a book to - or I'm not going to do it. Once you hand it to them, you're out. You have no control over it.

That's the irony in the work: the best stories are the worst things that happen. My best times were somebody else's worst.

Money. The ultimate motivation. The ultimate way of keeping score.

It's only a wonderful world if you can make it that way. There are no street signs pointing to Paradise Road.

Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really droppped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically -- any way you want to look at it -- everbody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case.

I never miss L.A. because I'm there enough.

Write every day even if it is just a paragraph.