Every book has some real life in it. I was never pursued by an evil twin clone, but everything else in MR. MURDER was pretty much out of my own life.
One of the lines from my books is about having respect for different minds, and if I had to have an epitaph at this point in my life, that would be it.
A theme in a lot of my books - and in my own life - is making choices that you feel you should make, or what society wants you to make, as opposed to what is truly right for you.
I wrote the book because I wanted to be able to share some things that I had learned and as pompous as that may sound, as you get to a certain point in life, you figure so what am I doing?
You can go to the pictures or read a book, but football constantly comes back into your mind. It's not a job, it's a life. It takes up your time, thoughts and energy and it can damage relationships with those around you.
Green chemistry is replacing our industrial chemistry with nature's recipe book. It's not easy, because life uses only a subset of the elements in the periodic table. And we use all of them, even the toxic ones.
I've never written a book with the intention of winning someone back or getting back at someone or anything like that. It's always just been about thinking about life and how relationships fit in to what life means.
I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.
There's the typical books, Moby Dick and, I guess in my adult life I began to read biographies more than fiction. I started to want to relate to other people's lives, things that had really happened.
Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them.
A border collie named Orson inspired me to buy a 110-acre farm with four barns and a sheep. That led to a series of books about Bedlam Farm and about dogs, rural life, lambing and herding sheep.
Coach Wooden, when he speaks, you listen. I've taken a lot of things from him and his little blue book because to him, it's not just about basketball, it's about life as well.
'Confessions of a Video Vixen' is not a book about my encounters with celebrities, or anyone else for that matter. It is my life story, thus far, which just so happens to include some people you may have heard of.
But, I think that the reason I responded to this book, sort of paradoxically, is that it starts out like The Big Chill, sort of. Four friends, who are not quite happy with their life, and every year they get together for a week and look for some comf...
When I was a boy, my parents were writers and they owned a bookstore, 'The Complete Traveler in New York,' so writing and books have held special places in my heart all my life.
I'm a real dumb-dumb in real life. I'm just book smart. But definitely not street smart. The other day I lost my jacket in a cab. And I'll forget things every time I leave the house.
Also, I had read a book called She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, written by a professor who had gone through transgender surgery, but it took this person well into his thirties to come to terms with the absolute necessity of having to do it.
Books, I don't know what you see in them. I can understand a person reading them, but I can't for the life of me see why people have to write them.
The older books were quite light-hearted. But I think most of my novels do end on a deep note of pessimism. Shadows seem to be closing in. The final conclusion isn't that life is wonderful and everything is bright and cheery and in the garden.
When I read Deborah Brenner's book 'Women of the Vine' about women wine makers, I was impressed that many of the women she had interviewed had come to wine making later in life as a second career.
I want that which is hilarious and that which is heartbreaking to occupy the same territory in the book because I think they very often occupy the same territory in life, much as we try to separate them.
