The legendary yet factual Curtis Wilkie has been the right man in the right place at an uncanny number of extraordinary times.

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

Twiddle-twiddle away at my softly clicky keyboard for a while, making twiddly adjustments all along- and then print what I have twiddled. Glare at the printout and snarl and curse and scribble almost illegibly all over it with a ballpoint pen. Go back to the machine and enter the scribbles. Repeat this procedure until I hate the very meaning of every word I know.

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

Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky.

Ham's substantial, ham is fat. Ham is firm and sound. Ham's what God was getting at When He made pigs so round.

I think writer's block is simply the dread that you are going to write something horrible. But as a writer, I believe that if you sit down at the keys long enough, sooner or later something will come out.