The turtle couldn't help us.

I still think that of all the people doing top fiction today, John D. MacDonald is the best.He was my model as a kid. If there are people out there that want to write, all you need to do is read 20 of his stories to get an idea what it takes to make a story kick over.

Resistance to change is proportional to how much the future might be altered by any given act.

Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes.

The poets continually and sometimes wilfully mistake love. Love is the old slaughterer.

As a teenager, I read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft, so I wrote like H.P. Lovecraft. And in my 20s, I read a lot of Ross Macdonald and Raymond Chandler, so I wrote like those guys. But, little by little, you develop your own style.

Now panic beats and flutters inside my skull like a flock of starlings locked in an attic.