Disney's something to be a little alarmed about. It's not just a little theme park anymore. It's now an ethic and outlook and strategy that goes way beyond central Florida.

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

They have a crystalline sense of right and wrong; it disappears when they walk out the door with their M.B.A.

Disney's something to be a little alarmed about. It's not just a little theme park anymore. It's now an ethic and outlook and strategy that goes way beyond central Florida.

The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind.

All novels are about crime. You'd be hard pressed to find any novel that does not have an element of crime. I don't see myself as a crime novelist, but there are crimes in my books. That's the nature of storytelling, if you want to reflect the real world.

Everybody's idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it's one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original.

Good satire comes from anger. It comes from a sense of injustice, that there are wrongs in the world that need to be fixed. And what better place to get that well of venom and outrage boiling than a newsroom, because you're on the front lines.

I don't have an e-reader. One reason is that I like to dog-ear the page when I find a particularly good sentence or passage.

I got overwhelmed by the magnitude of the celebrity culture in America. My background is as a news journalist, and newsrooms in the US are shrinking - investigation teams are being terminated or shrunk on newspapers all around the country. The one aspect that's expanded is coverage of celebrity culture.

I never laugh or smile when I am writing. When I come home for lunch after writing all morning, my wife says I look like I just came home from a funeral. This is not bragging. This is an illness.

I'd love to see a good script of one of my books, in these years of animations and comic book sequels, and had so many written over the years, but none quite clicked.

If you write satire, the guilty pleasure these days is that there's just so much material about. On the other hand, if you have a family it can be depressing.

My driving record is not exemplary, but I have never had a speeding ticket over 100 m.p.h. I can say that unequivocally.

My escape is to just get in a boat and disappear on the water.

My humour has always come from anger, but I have to make sure I don't just get angry and jump on a soapbox.

Nobody with an IQ higher than emergency-room temperature could ever believe that 'death panels' would be appointed to nudge the elderly toward euthanasia. Yet for idle entertainment, it's hard to beat Sarah Palin's ignorant nattering on the subject.

Obviously you have to make a profit to put out a newspaper. I'm not an idiot. But when the margins are in excess of 25 per cent you're talking about greed.

One problem with age is that patience begins to ebb.

The Florida in my novels is not as seedy as the real Florida. It's hard to stay ahead of the curve. Every time I write a scene that I think is the sickest thing I have ever dreamed up, it is surpassed by something that happens in real life.

The greatest sin for a writer is to be boring.

There is no writer's block in a newsroom. There's only unemployment block.

Unfortunately, I don't get to read nearly as much as I want because I'm always working on my own stuff, either the novels or newspaper columns.

We've always been fascinated with movie stars and singers, but the fascination with people who really have nothing to offer is something new.

When I'm working on a novel of my own, I try to read mostly nonfiction, although sometimes I break down and peek at something else.

When you put on the suits, when you pretend you're honest and you're robbing at a far higher level, these guys deserve to... well, to be in my novels, and I have special fates reserved for them.

You can do the best research and be making the strongest intellectual argument, but if readers don't get past the third paragraph you've wasted your energy and valuable ink.

My kids enjoy the Disney program, Lizzy McGuire.

I wanted to be a part of the Disney history.

Disney had such a hold on the mind of America-they were Adolf Hitler. The whole country thought Disney was some sort of god and that animation was some sort of pure thing for children.

One of the best animated films I've seen come out of Disney was the Tarzan movie. I wasn't crazy about the story or the design on Tarzan's face, but the traditional animation was spectacular.

I have a 6-year-old, and his thing is to turn on Radio Disney in the car, and I get such an allergic reaction to listening to that music and the context into which it falls. I'm really working on him about that.

I'm saddened to see that some have been misled into believing that Mr. Disney was something other than a kind, caring man.

Disney made a fortune out of inventing the businessman's idea of the imaginary as the contradictory of the businessman's idea of the real.

Florida has tons of entertainment opportunities because Walt Disney World and Universal Studios are there.

We've been able to access deals that under our former relationship with Disney - with tax advantages and strategic partners - that we just weren't able to do.

That's always at the heart and soul of Disney's features, the feeling of a family values.

Someone at Disney heard one of the records and called me in to do the sounds of Lucifer the Cat in Cinderella.

I had the great good fortune to interview Peggy Lee. Her memories of working with Walt Disney and his team were warm and upbeat.

This is a Disney animated feature; it's eternal, it's history. What's there to think about'

Disney has the best casting. If he doesn't like an actor he just tears him up.

I know that the work is good and they're excited over at ABC and Disney and it's getting some really good feedback. It's not just a little, insignificant kind of role. It's meaty, which is good.

Look what Disney's done to their animation department. There wasn't an animator in charge of their animation unit!

I mean when I was working shall we say with Disney, you know they sent me the script for the film Hercules and I had to imagine what all the characters looked like. And to develop those characters, so nothing exists visually when I get the script.

The cool part about working for Disney is that they've allowed me to be a change agent.

Pixar is going in the direction of the early Disney. And it's also corporate, where they have four or five projects in the works. I don't want to get into that subject.

Disney is thrilling and informative and important and beautiful and suspect. Butts was a detail I observed later and definitely ties in. I suppose I was programmed, yeah.

I joined Walt Disney, went to work, December 2nd 1935, so obviously, I'm not too young!

Walt Disney was my great hero.