Life was a wheel, its only job was to turn, and it always came back to where it started.

As a young man just beginning to publish some short fiction in the t&a magazines, I was fairly optimistic about my chances of getting published; I knew that I had some game, as the basketball players say these days, and I also felt that time was on my side; sooner or later the best-selling writers of the sixties and seventies would either die or go senile, making room for newcomers like me.

The dream might have been more than a dream. It was as if a door in the wall of reality had come ajar... and now all sorts of unwelcome things were flying through.

I have no plans to get an iPad. I know it will do more things than my Kindle, but I don’t want more things. If I want other stuff - movies, TV shows, weather forecasts, the forthcoming Josh Ritter album - I have my Mac.

The low bird is not picked tenderly out of the dust by its fellows; rather, it is dispatched quickly and without mercy.

Everything's a lot tougher when it's for real. That's when you choke. When it's for real.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.