I'm actually a softie. Tough guys get killed too early... I've got a full head of hair and don't wear eyeglasses.

I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am. Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney.

I'm a country boy. I hate New York. But that's where things happen, so I use it as a base for stories, I know enough about it. But I have to keep going back there.

I don't like people. I don't like any kind of people. When you get them together in a big lump they all get nasty and dirty and full of trouble. So I don't like people including you. That's what a misanthropist is.

If you're a singer you lose your voice. A baseball player loses his arm. A writer gets more knowledge, and if he's good, the older he gets, the better he writes.

Those big-shot writers ... could never dig the fact that there are more salted peanuts consumed than caviar.

I'm a commercial writer, not an author. Margaret Mitchell was an author. She wrote one book.