Teaching is too strong a word for whatever it was I did at Northeastern University

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even.

Very few of my books are about who stole the Maltese Falcon

It's tempting to say the Ph.D. didn't have an effect, but it's not so. I think whatever resonance I may be able to achieve is in part simply from the amount of reading and learning that I acquired along the way

I got thrown out of school several weeks in my senior year being caught in the girls' dorm. This was 1954, friends. The girls' dorm was off limits. Even to girls, I think.

I needed to find my way to write. I need about six hours of uninterrupted time in order to produce about two hours of writing, and when I accepted that and found the way to do it, then I was able to write.

For David Parker and Daniel Parker, with the respect and admiration of their father, who grew up with them.