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.

Bright was the light of my last martini on my moral horizon

For 40 years we were led to think of the Russians as godless, materialistic and an evil empire. When the Cold War ended, we suddenly discovered that Russia was a poor Third World country. They had not been equipped to take over the world. In fact, they were just trying to improve a miserable standard of oppressive living, and couldn't. They had to spend too much on arms build-up. We didn't win the Cold War; we bankrupted the Russians. In effect, it was a big bank exhausting the reserves of a smaller one.

The nightmare in every democracy, the very nightmare, is if it gets worse and worse and worse, we could end up totalitarian.

To be married to a good woman is to live with tender surprise.

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.

People who live under fascism are not only miserable but they're full of shame. You just don't go in and inject democracy into them. They're half crazy with their own.