News is history shot on the wing. The huntsmen from the Fourth Estate seek to bag only the peacock or the eagle of the swifting day.

Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.

What is success? It is a toy balloon among children armed with pins.

Men are not against you, they are merely for themselves.

The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.

An editor should have a pimp for a brother so he'd have someone to look up to.

Every man should be allowed to love two cities, his own and San Francisco

A book is never finished; it's abandoned.

He has a profound respect for old age. Especially when it's bottled.

Sometimes I think my writing sounds like I walked out of the room and left the typewriter running.

A man who makes a one-dollar profit on his expense account is dishonest. A man who loses five cents on one is a damned fool.

In her crazy, upside down world, she needed someone like that. A rock that would keep her going, an anchor to keep her from drifting away. Instead, she was alone

It is in opposing the world’s lies that we impose truth in our hearts.

White IrisThe iris danced acrossthe ancient Grecian skiesgliding with her embossedsatiny milken sides ...

Miracles, to the Sufi, are not evidential, they are instrumental.

I think the suicides in my first book came from the idea of growing up in Detroit. If you grow up in a city like that you feel everything is perishing, evanescent and going away very quickly.

Criminals thrive on the indulgence of society’s understanding.

It takes work to plot a course that is both thrilling and truthful, but it's worth it.

Wrapt up in error is the human mind, And human bliss is ever insecure; Know we what fortune yet remains behind? Know we how long the present shall endure?

Under what circumstances is it moral for a group to do that which is not moral for a member of that group to do alone?

The hardest part was getting the window net hooked back. I didn't think I was ever going to get it hooked. I finally got it hooked. If I'd known that I wouldn't have tried to hook it.