The quiet, singing voice of the rose. The song that promised all might be well, all might be well, that all manner of things might be well.

What a paragon of virtue you are, gunslinger!" the man in black laughed.

I do not kill with my gun; He who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

So okay - there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You've blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.

They were close to the end of the beginning . . .

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.