Yeah. Floyd is his batman." His what?" Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant." You spend too much time reading, Spenser. You know more stuff that don't make you money than anybody I know.

Has anyone ever told you," I said, "that you coalesce reality?" "No. They only say that I'm good in the sack." "They are accurate but limited," I said. "And if you give me their names I'll kill them.

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know.

We split a bottle of Norman cider. Not everybody sells Norman cider by the bottle.

There's something about being able to literally consume a work of art - then to divide all that pleasure of it - because it's a memory. A great wine for me is a memory, it's an extraordinary experience.

This was 1954, friends. The girls' dorm was off limits. Even to girls, I think.

I took my .38 out and looked to see that there were bullets in all the proper places. I knew there would be, but it did no harm to be careful. And I'd seen Clint Eastwood do it once in the movies.