The best show on television is Red Sox baseball. Everything else sucks.

They're animals, all right. But why are you so goddam sure that makes us human beings?

One of the really bad things you can do to your writing is to dress up the vocabulary, looking for long words because you're maybe a little bit ashamed of your short ones. This is like dressing up a household pet in evening clothes. The pet is embarrassed and the person who committed this act of premeditated cuteness should be even more embarrassed.

The wife whose sweetly given reply in the face of any problem would be, "Whatever you think is best, dear." Women, take note: a wife like that never needs to fear bubbling away the last of her life through a cut throat.

When you start, it's very cold, an impossible task. But then maybe the characters start to take on a little bit of life, or the story takes a turn that you don't expect ... With me that happens a lot because I don't outline, I just have a vague notion. So it's always felt like less of a made thing and more of a found thing. That's exciting. That's a thrill.

One of life's great truths is this: when one is about to be struck by a speeding six-hundred pound Coke machine, one need worry about little else.

But it's hard for a man to give up all his pleasures, even when they don't pleasure him no more.