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.

For the record, pot, like the Reader's Digest , is not necessarily habit-forming, but both can lead to hard-core addiction : heroin, in one case, abridged bad books, in the other. Either way you look at it, a withdrawal from a meaningful life.

If you're writing a novel, you're in a room for three or four years. There's not much coming in from the outside.

I'm criticized by the feminists, by the Jewish establishment, by Canadian nationalists. And why not? I've had my pot shots at them. I'm fair game.

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

The revolution eats its own. Capitalism re-creates itself.

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