Get your friends together, go to your local bookstore and have a book-buying party.

Think about scary movies: There's a fine line between horror and humor.

A good heavy book holds you down. It's an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic.

Vincent van Gogh's mother painted all of his best things. The famous mailed decapitated ear was a figment of the public relations firm engaged by Van Gogh's dealer.

Lots of people have expressed consternation that I haven't gotten rid of Southern accent, but I just never saw any reason to lose the flavor that I grew up with. I enjoy saying some things with a Southern accent.

Somebody informed me recently that the key to every art, from writing to gardening to sculpture, is creativity. I beg to differ.

English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies.