In Canada, nobody is ever overthrown because nobody gives a damn.

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

And furthermore did you know that behind the discovery of America there was a Jewish financier?

It is no more expected of most producers to read a book than it is, say, of Ted Williams to dust off home plate.

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.

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.

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.