"If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested." — Tom Wolfe

Driving a stock car does not require much handling ability, at least not as compared to Grand Prix racing, because the tracks are simple banked ovals and there is almost no shifting of gears. So, qualifying becomes a test of raw nerve - of how fast a man is willing to take a curve.

There was a time in the 1930s when magazine writers could actually make a good living. 'The Saturday Evening Post' and 'Collier's' both had three stories in each issue. These were usually entertaining, and people really went for them. But then television came along, and now of course, information technology... the new way of killing time.

My idol is Emile Zola. He was a man of the left, so people expected of him a kind of 'Les Miserables,' in which the underdogs are always noble people. But he went out, and found a lot of ambitious, drunk, slothful and mean people out there. Zola simply could not - and was not interested in - telling a lie.

'Back to Blood' really took it out of me. While I was writing it, I just never went out anywhere, except to the gym.

Working on newspapers, you're writing to a certain length, often very brief pieces; you tend to look for easy forms of humor - women can't drive, things like that. That's about the level of a lot of newspaper humor. It becomes a form of laziness.

I'm a great believer in outlines.

You never realise how much of your background is sewn into the lining of your clothes.

Even hostile parodies admit from the start that the target has a distinct voice.

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If a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged, a liberal is a conservative who's been arrested.