Of course when you were running with the bottom dogs, what you mostly saw were paws, claws, and assholes.

No one can be as intellectually slothful as a really smart person

I think we rarely recognize the fifth business in our lives at the time those people are changing us.

I can't see the future, but it's grim. The depletion of resources - we're living in this dine-and-dash economy.

She nods. You're good for the ones you love. You want to be good for the ones you love, because you know that your time with them will end up being too short, no matter how long it is.

A critical assumption is sometimes made that [Grisham, Clancey, Crichton & myself] have access to some mystical vulgate that other (and often better) writers cannot find or will not deign to use. I doubt if this is true. Nor do I believe the contention of some popular novelists... that thier success is based on literary merit -- that the public understands true greatness in ways the tight-a**ed, consumed-by-jealousy literary establishment cannot. This idea is ridiculous, a product of vanity and insecurity.

Madness is a kind of mental suicide.