Somebody asked Somerset Maugham about his place in the pantheon of writers, and he said, "I'm in the very front row of the second rate." I'm sort of haunted by that.

you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

The first real terror struck him then, and there was nothing supernatural about it. It was only a realization of how easy it was to trash your life. That was what was so scary. You just dragged the fan up to everything you had spent the years raking together and turned the motherfucker on.

There are really very few economies of scale in centralising or standardising advertising.

You learn best by reading a lot and writing a lot, and the most valuable lessons of all are the ones you teach yourself.

That's the curse of the reading class. We can be seduced by a good story even at the most inopportune moments.

Most people are optimists, although they may claim they are not. People who call themselves realists are often the biggest optimists of all.