We got enough champagne here to start a France.

I try to keep all my novels in print. Sometimes publishers don’t agree with me as to their worth.

I wanted to be an artist. I was studying art. I wanted to be a great painter. When I went into the Navy, there wasn’t much to draw at sea. So I began writing, and I began reading a lot.

I’ve never been a cop nor hope to be a cop, thanks.

I would like to win the Pulitzer Prize. I would like to win the Nobel Prize. I would like to win a Tony award for the Broadway musical I’m now working on. Aside from these, my aspirations are modest ones.

Depending on what I’m working on, I come to the writing desk with entirely different mindsets. When I change form one to the other, it’s as if another writer is on the scene.

I never take ideas from the headlines. I feel that if a story is good enough, a real story that is, then it’s already been covered by the media, and if it’s not good enough, why would I want to bother with it?

Readers are what it’s all about, aren’t they? If not, why am I writing?

He sees death in convicted thieves, the burglars, the muggers, the con men, the pimps, a death imposed by law, the gradual death of confinement behind bars.

He sees death in the prostitutes who have witnessed the death of honor, and daily multiply the death of love, who bleed away their own lives 50 times a day beneath the relentless stabbings of countless conjugations.