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 played in a movie called Ring of Fear with Clyde Beatty and Pat O'Brien.

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

Nobody reads a book to get to the middle.

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.

Critics themselves, they used to tear me up.

I'm the most translated writer in the world, behind Lenin, Tolstoy, Gorki and Jules Verne. And they're all dead.