Someone once told me the one thread that runs through them all is a premium on personal courage - not intellectual courage, but just plain physical courage.

I never earned a dollar that was not somehow through writing.

Events alone rarely provide much guide to the future.

Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.

The ones that measure up are not always the ones you expect.

I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations.

It would be nice to say the rich people, the fancy people, all behaved like bastards and the poor slobs all came through like heroes. But as a matter of fact, sometimes the poor slobs behave like slobs and the great, noble, privileged characters come off very well, indeed.