People think they own time. They have watches and clocks and digital pulses. But they are wrong. Time owns them.

I decided to write short stories because they got rejected quicker.

Breakfast was only worth having when somebody else made it for you.

People nearly always believe, and are willing to back it up with weapons and cruelty, that their religion and way of life is better than the other person's

I approach serious subjects, and I like to have the good guys win and have the parents among the good guys

If you write a story based on a real person, you're trapped by the details of the real person and his life. It gets in the way of writing your own story.

I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession.

My favorite book is always the one I'm working on at the moment

I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published

Actually my first eight books were historical novels, but they were never published

in Los Angeles ... was the thinking-est crowd on earth: how to get ahead, how to mold a better body, how to have a better relationship, how to score, earn, fight, win, get published, be a star.

In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke.

He is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention

Once you train an audience to look for significance, they start to find it everywhere.

There is no happiness for a society ruled by distrust.

Failure is not falling down but staying down.

I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.

Life's too short to be shoehorned into a box that isn't for you.

You must see your goals clearly and specifically before you can set out for them. Hold them in your mind until they become second nature.

Such physical matters were nice, yet, to him, intelligence and passion born of living, the ability to move and be moved by subtleties of the mind and spirit, were what really counted.

If you really love someone, you shouldn't have to work at it, you finish each others' sentences and have the same sense of humor.