Anger is the most useless emotion," Henchick intoned, "destructive to the mind and hurtful to the heart.

Poe was the first writer to write about main characters who were bad guys or who were mad guys, and those are some of my favorite stories.

I don't want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world but opted for the Home Shopping Network Instead).

Understand death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you.

When asked, "How do you write?" I invariably answer, "One word at a time," and the answer is invariably dismissed. But that is all it is. It sounds too simple to be true, but consider the Great Wall of China, if you will: one stone at a time, man. That's all. One stone at a time. But I've read you can see that motherfucker from space without a telescope.

He did it (listened) as the world's most charming and magnetic people do, always asking the right question at the right time, never fidgeting or taking his eyes from the speaker's face, making the other guy feel like the most knowledgeable, brilliant, and intellectually savvy person on the planet.

Any thoughts of guilt, any feelings of regret, had faded. The desert had baked them out.