I am open to the accusation that I see compost as an end it itself. But we do grow some real red damn tomatoes such as you can't get in the stores. And potatoes, beans, lettuce, collards, onions, squash, cauliflower, eggplant, carrots, peppers. Dirt in you own backyard, producing things you eat. Makes you wonder.

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

Pete Rose is too rich a character to fit on a bronze plaque. He requires a good, trenchant, poignant (ah, Petey) book, and this is it.

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

I do not Twitter. I don't want to Twitter, and I don't see any point in Twittering. The last thing I want to do is tell people what I'm doing at the moment because I'm probably not doing what I'm supposed to be doing.

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.

I think a writer is not an ideal husband... Writers tend to get off into their own heads and not notice the people that they're living with, or they get irritable with the people that they're living with when the people insist on being noticed.