It's tempting to say the Ph.D. didn't have an effect, but it's not so. I think whatever resonance I may be able to achieve is in part simply from the….

Fourteen years in the professor dodge has taught me that one can argue ingeniously on behalf of any theory, applied to any piece of literature. This ….

If you are going to live life on your own terms, there need to be terms, and somehow you need to live up to them..

The key to growing up well, is being tough enough..

I took my .38 out and looked to see that there were bullets in all the proper places. I knew there would be, but it did no harm to be careful. And I'….

Being a professor and working are not the same thing. The academic community is composed largely of nitwits. If I may generalize. People who don't kn….

For David Parker and Daniel Parker, with the respect and admiration of their father, who grew up with them..

I have reached the point where I know that as long as I sit down to write, the ideas will come. What they will be, I don't know..

I had achieved the most important things in my life when I married Joan and had the sons. Given the choice between Joan and the boys, and being a wri….

Yeah. Floyd is his batman..

You do the best you can and you deal with the consequences. It's all there is..

I write five pages a day. If you would read five pages a day, we'd stay right even..

I needed to find my way to write. I need about six hours of uninterrupted time in order to produce about two hours of writing, and when I accepted th….

Both our opinions are rooted in our experience," I said. "Both of them are true, it's just that we've had different experiences..

I think at this stage in my life I have learned that there are any number of things that men will never know, and can never hope to know, about women..

If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send i….

College had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I'd have flunked out sooner..

We split a bottle of Norman cider. Not everybody sells Norman cider by the bottle..

Yeah. Floyd is his batman." His what?" Batman, like in the British army, each officer had a batman, a personal servant." You spend too much time read….

There's something about being able to literally consume a work of art - then to divide all that pleasure of it - because it's a memory. A great wine ….

I was on the Oprah Winfrey Show once. It was a really slow news day for Oprah, and there were several of us on 'cause none of us was sufficiently int….