Gasping for breath, the body still battling for life.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.

A man who doesn't dream is like a man who doesn't sweat. He stores up a lot of poison.

It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.

I always write the end of everything first. I always write the last chapters of my books before I write the beginning....Then I go back to the beginning. I mean, it's always nice to know where you're going is my theory.

If Francoise Sagan hadn't written a book called A Chateau in Sweden, I would certainly write a short story called A Chateau in Puerto Rico. And I may yet.

When the prisoner is brought down from Death Row he steps from the elevator directly into a "holding" room that adjoins the witness room. There are two cells in this "holding" room, two, in case it's a double execution. They're ordinary cells, just like this one, and the prisoner spends his last night there before his execu­tion in the morning, reading, listening to the radio, playing cards with the guards.