I watch people get older and lose their intellectual acuity; you lose that sharpness, that cleanness, that brain that you worked so hard on and that you were gifted with and lose the gifts that were given.

If I were king of the world there wouldn't be boat people, there would only be people coming in boats. I would mix us all up so that we were all exactly one shade of each other.

I was born illegitimately and almost immediately, as I understand it, placed in an orphanage. So my very earliest memories were in an orphanage. It was the tag end of the Great Depression when I was born. People were desperately poor.

People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents.

I'm going to die with my mind intact. And to me that is the most exciting way you could possibly die.

My job, and that's my job, is to dress the naked truth. To make it interesting, to make it viable, to make it seem like something you understand and feel and love.