I will say only that all a writer has to work with is the material he has gathered as the result of his own endeavor and observations, and he cannot be denied the right to use it. Condemn, but not deny.

Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.

Good writing is rewriting.

Talent, and genius as well, is like a grain of pearl sand shifting about in the creative mind. A valued tormentor.

Well, I'm about as tall as a shotgun, and just as noisy.

Lee Harvey Oswald was boiling over about everything: the American ambassador; the Russians-he was mad at them because they wouldn't let him stay in Moscow. We talked to him for about half an hour, and my Italian friend didn't think the guy was worth filing a story about. Just another paranoid hysteric; the Moscow woods were rampant with those. I never thought about him again, not until many years later. Not until after the assassina­tion when I saw his picture flashed on television.

our real fears are the sounds of footsteps walking in the corridors of our minds, and the anxieties, the phantom floatings, they create.