The phone rang. It was a thing that had been sitting here, black and quiet like a holstered gun, unlisted, unknown to anybody, used only for local ou… - Mickey Spillane

I know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can't understand it. My father was a good Irish saloon-keeper, my mother always said to him, 'Jack, how come you know everybody here' and he'd say, 'because I say hello'. I'm just like that, I've always been that way.

They had left him for dead in the middle of a pool of blood in his own bedroom, his belly slit open like gaping barn doors, the hilt of the knife wedged against his sternum. But the only trouble was that he had stayed alive somehow, his life pumping out, managing to knock the telephone off the little table and dial me. Now he was looking up at me with seconds left and all he could do was force out the words, "Mike ...there was no reason."

When I started the paperback market, there were only a few good writers, now the market's loaded... you don't know which one to take.