Other people get into occupations by accident or design; but writers are born. I could work at selling motels, or slopping hogs, for fifty years, but if someone asked my occupation, I'd say writer, even if I'd never sold a word. Writers write. Other people talk.

Found a good voice and took advantage of it. Each of my specialties was like a prospector discovering a vein of gold. I worked each until the vein was exhausted.

My main income came from failed movie and TV options.

Any game becomes important when you know and love the players.

Syzygy, inexorable, pancreatic, phantasmagoria - anyone who can use those four words in one sentence will never have to do manual labor.

I am an old-fashioned storyteller. I try to make people laugh and cry. A fiction writer's duty is to entertain. If you can sneak in something profound or symbolic, so much the better.

I lost my wife Barbara to cancer few years ago. I would give whatever time I have left to spend one more day with her.