The kids accepted my drinking as a part of life. Not a particularly pernicious part. I didn't beat up on them. Basically I don't think I was so different from a lot of dads who have three or four martinis when they get in from work, wine with dinner and so on.

Writing fiction, especially a long work of fiction, can be a difficult, lonely job; it's like crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a bathtub. There's plenty of opportunity for self-doubt.

There's a Mr. Hyde for every happy Jekyll face, a dark face on the other side of the mirror.

He had a massive stroke. He died with his tie on. Do you think that could be our generation's equivalent of that old saying about dying with your boots on?

God and the afterlife and all that is certainly a subject that's interested me, and I think it interests me more the older that I get.

There's nothing like stories on a windy night when folks have found a warm place in a cold world.

A dimwit thinks nothing is funny unless it's mean.