Formula: Second Draft = First Draft minus 10%.

As with all other aspects of the narrative art, you will improve with practice, but practice will never make you perfect. Why should it? What fun would that be?

Panic is highly contagious, especially in situations when nothing is known and everything is in flux.

In the end we always wear out our worries. That’s what Wireman says.

Somebody asked Somerset Maugham about his place in the pantheon of writers, and he said, "I'm in the very front row of the second rate." I'm sort of haunted by that.

Every liberal in the country must watch Fox News for one year, and every conservative in the country must watch MSNBC for one year. (Middle-of-the-roaders could stick with CSI)

I have grown into a Bestsellasaurus Rex - a big, stumbling book-beast that is loved when it shits money and hated when it tramples houses... I started out as a storyteller; along the way I became an economic force.