I really hate those books where the murderer turns out to be somebody you never heard of who pops up in the last chapter.

In my day, we didn't have self-esteem, we had self-respect, and no more of it than we had earned.

You've either got to find a way to make your continuing characters interesting without making them maudlin or overwrought, or you've got to put more emphasis on the suspects.

Everybody is a True Believer. Everybody has a little nugget they're convinced of that is the opposite of the nugget on the other side. And they're convinced it's fact.

Knowledge pursued for its own sake - that's the definition of education, as opposed to training.

I was the executive editor on a little magazine called Greek Accent, whose only claim to fame is that its art director went on to be the art director of Discover for many years.

Nobody in real life ever takes me seriously.

I don't make my own schedule - it's constructed around my sons' school schedules.

Listen to advice. You don't know how many writer's conferences I've taught at where at least half the audience fights all the conventions of the field.

I've been a teacher at the college level, in composition mostly, and I've been an editor on magazines.

People always seemed to know half of history, and to get it confused with the other half.

Maybe I'd always been broken and dark inside. Maybe someone who've been born whole and good would have put down the ash dagger and embraced death rather than what lay before me.

In our house, some of our favourite recipes just happen to be vegetarian, but I still enjoy meat and I believe very much in meat.

But lilies, stolen from grassy mold, No more curled state unfold, Translated to a vase of gold; In burning throne though they keep still Serenities unthawed and chill.

The goal of Scientology is making the individual capable of living a better life in his own estimation and with his fellows and the playing of a better game.

Today's competitiveness, so much imposed from without, is exhausting, not exhilarating; is unending-a part of one's social life, one's solitude, one's sleep, one's sleeplessness.

If you find yourself getting nervous stop and relax for three full breaths. Then take one small step, then another. That is how people get to the top of Everest.

I like their darkness but I also like the pop-side of the Velvet Underground.

It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't.

Leave off looking to men to find out what you are not - seek within yourselves to find out what you are.

Do not be taken in or flattered by your own success or fame. Take not only as to whether or not the old creation, including everything which comes by birth, has gone through the cross.