Human beings have got a lot of good, noble impulses inside them, and most people want to be good and do more good than they do evil. Hell, we've had nuclear weapons now for thirty or thirty-five years and nothing's happened yet. That in itself seems to be a miracle. If Reagan pushes the button or somebody pushes the button in Russia or somebody pushes it in Costa Rica, they can put a big tombstone in outer space that says, "We gave it a good try." Because we have.

I think we fought Vietnam for the benefits of civilization, and certainly we fought it to oppose authority. To show our authority, to show we weren't weak. Isn't that what Nixon kept saying? "We have to show the world that we're not weak." So of course what we ended up showing the world was that we were, yep, weak. 'Cause we couldn't beat these kids in black pajamas.

Until that afternoon in October four years ago, I hadn't known dogs could scream.

The late afternoon sunlight, warm as oil, sweet as childhood.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." -

And if you are honest about the words coming out of your characters' mouths, you'll find that you've let yourself in for a fair amount of criticism.