A novel may take anywhere from two to five years to write and, in the end, you might manage a couple of thousand dollars on it, no more.

If you caricature friends in your first novel they will be upset, but if you don't they will feel betrayed.

A boy can be two, three, four potential people, but a man is only one. He murders the others.

There are three sides to every argument. Yours. The other guy's. And the right side.

Nothing is absolute any longer. There is a choice of beliefs and a choice of truths to go with them. If you choose not to choose then there is no truth at all. There are only points of view.

There are ten commandments, right? Well, it's like an exam. You get eight out of ten, you're just about top of the class.

I'm criticized by the feminists, by the Jewish establishment, by Canadian nationalists. And why not? I've had my pot shots at them. I'm fair game.

Beauty, like male ballet dancers, makes some men afraid.

Each man creates god in his own image.

Edmonton is not the end of the world but you can certainly see it from there.

Fundamentally, all writing is about the same thing; it's about dying, about the brief flicker of time we have here, and the frustration that it creates.

The reader leaves his mark on the book, as the book leaves its mark on the reader.

For an artist is not a consumer, as our commercials urge us to be. An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not create alone.

Let no feeling of discouragement prey upon you and in the end you are sure to succeed.

If there is no cure, you must endure.

You name the TV psychic - they're con men.

In the end, every scheme and every science is justified by itself or it is not justified at all.

I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people.

It seems to me that at least as far as the financial markets are concerned, there is increasing evidence against rational expectations, even at the macro level.

Blair is regarded by most people in Britain as a smarmy git.

The road to Hades is easy to travel.