My imagination was running amok again. Twice in one night. This never happens when I’m sitting in front of a typewriter.

Writers, even unpublished writers, have a tendency not to notice what’s going on around them when they are the center of attention.

When I was a teenager, most fathers tended to go berserk when I asked their daughters on a date.... I discovered that all fathers go berserk when their daughters start dating. I have to assume this was because all fathers were once teenagers at some point in their lives, so they had no illusions about whether or not the boys were “up to something.

She looked confused. She looked off-balance. That’s a technique I employ to get dates, and it always works.

A lot of artists start out as failed poets, then move on to being failed short-story writers before they finally break through to the big time and become failed novelists.