I AM a male chauvinist. Who's been saying otherwise?

If you hate what you're seeing, you call it sex and violence. If you like it, you call it 'romance and adventure.'

As I've said many times, the single most oppressed class in America right now is the teenager.

It's not a crime to get drunk.

A universal draft is most often the instrument of Third World dictators.

Almost every venerable tradition at a men's club starts out as a joke.

Apparently we love our own cell phones but we hate everyone else's.

Discourse is fleeting, but junk mail is forever.

Faith is like a kernel of wheat.

In other words, New York has gone all suburban and bourgeois on us.

The best ally you can have in breaking up a street fight is a grandmother.

There is no post-9/11. Everything from now until the end of time is post-9/11.

Everything changed in Bosnia, when General Wesley Clark proved that you could fight a war with high- level precision air strikes and a bare minimum of ground action.

In some European theaters, it's still not uncommon to have a late start and three LONG intermissions, because people actually eat and drink and converse during the intermissions.

The Italians always made good wine, but you had the impression they were friendly guys in straw hats running family vineyards with slaves or something so that the vino was never more than ten bucks a bottle.

When I write, I get glimpses into future novels.

During my last year of college I wrote the same ten pages over and over again. Those ten pages became the first few pages of my first novel. I can still recite the opening paragraph from memory - only now I cringe when I do it because they are - surprise! - a classic example of 'overwriting,' in addition to being a more than a little pretentious.

For the traditional fantasies, a lot more of my research comes from reading rather than doing. I like my worlds to feel real, so I do a lot of world building research.

I am not attempting to preserve culture, or record actual events or stories. Instead I bow my head in gratitude to those storytellers who have gone before and paved a way for me play in their stomping grounds. Doubtless those who want to be offended, will - allowing me to make them happy, too, which pleases me as much as it pleases them.

I've been a storyteller all my life. When I was in high school, I used to amuse myself by driving through the woods at night and see how long it would be before I scared the pants off my friends - and if I could do it before I scared myself.