When a novel comes, it's a grace. Something in the cosmos has forgiven you long enough so that you can start.

Conservatives are people who look at a tree and feel instinctively that it is more beautiful than anything they can name. But when it comes to defending that tree against a highway, they will go for the highway.

Dying can't be all that difficult-up to now everyone has managed to do it.

I always start a book for money. If you're married five times you have to.

...the indispensable requirement for a good newspaperman - as eager to tell a lie as the truth.

MIke Lee writes with honesty, penetration, wit and the ability to surprise the reader with an unexpected turn from time to time that enriches the experience.

It's very bad to write a novel by act of will. I can do a book of nonfiction work that way - just sign the contract and do the book because, provided the topic has some meaning for me, I know I can do it. But a novel is different. A novel is more like falling in love. You don't say, 'I'm going to fall in love next Tuesday, I'm going to begin my novel.' The novel has to come to you. It has to feel just like love.