A novel may take anywhere from two to five years to write and, in the end, you might manage a couple of thousand dollars on it, no more.

A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others.

If you caricature friends in your first novel they will be upset, but if you don't they will feel betrayed.

I work every day - or at least I force myself into office or room. I may get nothing done, but you don't earn bonuses without putting in time. Nothing may come for three months, but you don't earn the fourth without it.

I obviously prefer writing novels but I take my journalism very seriously, and I enjoy doing it between novels. It gives me an opportunity to move in the outside world.

Actually, when it comes to knocking the Canadian cultural scene, nobody outdoes Canadians, myself included. We are veritable masters of self-deprecation.

If you don't count some of Jehovah's injunctions, there are no humorists in the Bible.