I work most days and if you work most days and you get at least a page done a day, then at the end of the year you have 365. So the pages accumulate and then I publish the books.

A life of writing books is a trying adventure in which you cannot find out where you are unless you lose your way.

You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.

You can't write good satirical fiction in America because reality will quickly outdo anything you might invent.

I turn sentences around. That's my life. I write a sentence and then I turn it around. Then I look at it and turn it around again.

World War III will be triggered off not by suppressed nationalists seeking political independence, as happened the first time around when the Serbs at Sarajevo shot the heir to the Austrian throne, but by some semiliterate, whacked-out "loner" who lobs a rocket into a nuclear arsenal in order to impress Brooke Shields.

Sheer Playfulness and Deadly Seriousness are my closest friends.