I loved it, but social reality impeded. Now I wander in here at 9 in the morning or so, and come back for a while in the afternoon. I am a very lenient boss.

When Stark isn't off sulking somewhere, or whatever he's doing when he won't return my calls, I alternate between the two. That usually works well, though occasionally an idea for the wrong guy drifts through my mind.

I start with the story, almost in the old campfire sense, and the story leads to both the characters, which actors should best be cast in this story, and the language. The choice of words, more than anything else, creates the feeling that the story gives off.

I also wanted Parker to operate in the Internet age without losing being Parker. He's always operated in the world without really being with the world, and cyberspace means that the rest of us are more and more living the same way.

Everybody in New York is looking for something. Once in a while, somebody finds it.

Once he became a series character, I made the conscious choice that he would never act like a series character, never wink at the reader, never pull his punches. Better for him, better for me.

Who's a boy gonna talk to if not his mother?

The many magazines, ranging from pulp to slick, that used to serve as both farm teams for writers and lures to readers, with hundreds of short stories every month, don't exist. Most of the doors for new people have been sealed.

I make a note, set it aside, and hope it makes sense when the time comes to look at it again.

If you think of movie studio executives, say, as society, then I root for the independent producers.

All of the changes in publishing since 1960 are significant. There are far fewer publishers.

My work schedule has changed over the years. The one constant is, when at work on a novel, I try to work seven days a week, so as not to lose touch with that world. Within that, I'm flexible on hours and output.

If it weren't for received ideas, the publishing industry wouldn't have any ideas at all.

I loved it, but social reality impeded. Now I wander in here at 9 in the morning or so, and come back for a while in the afternoon. I am a very lenient boss.

Sorry; I have no space left for advice. Just do it.

Seem to be telling this, but really telling that. Three-dimensional writing, like three-dimensional chess. Nabokov was the other master of that. You could learn something from Nabokov on every page he ever wrote.

Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God knows what I'd be. A drain on the State, I shouldn't wonder.

A friend of mine, now retired, was then a major exec at a major bank, and one of her jobs, the last four years, was the farewell interview.

To make a long story short, there's nothing like having a boss walk in.

Whether they run a record company or a grocery store, every boss will tell you you're in big trouble if you're borrowing more than you can ever afford to pay back. Delaying the pain for future generations is suicidal. We've got to start getting the deficit down right now, not next year.

As an individual, not as the boss of a company, I am very interested in motor racing.

I have learned that trying to guess what the boss or the client wants is the most debilitating of all influences in the creation of good advertising.

Too many people in government seem to think they are above regular folks, and I said I would expect humility in the way each member of my team served- that they would recognize that the taxpayer is boss.

The type of contract between players and producers is, I feel, antiquated in form and abstract in concept. We have no privacies which producers cannot invade, they trade us like cattle, boss us like children.

To me, success was not having to have a boss and not having a day job. I've been living my own version of success since the early '90s when I first got signed. I haven't had a job since then.

Well, what I tried to do is to just listen to my voice, because my voice is my boss. She decides.

The speed of the boss is the speed of the team.

New York State is upside down and backwards; high taxes and low performance. The New York State government was at one time a national model. Now, unfortunately, it's a national disgrace. Sometimes, the corruption in Albany could even make Boss Tweed blush.

I loved my role on Who's the Boss? There is always some of me in every character that I play.

I've never wanted to be the boss.

That's my main flaw: I always think authority figures or my boss is going to think something I do is funny. And usually they don't.

We were a fast-growing company, and I was a demanding boss.

My men and I have decided that our boss, the president of the United States, is as tough as woodpecker lips.

So I still seized the power, but I felt that if I officially made myself the boss, in black and white, it would be too intimidating for the other producers and the other men who worked on the show. In other words, I had the power, but I gave them the title.

My boss told me to get my butt in gear. I told him I was shiftless.

Women is fine once you got em pinned down, boss, but when they ain't pinned down they're hell.

Obviously, if the commander makes certain decisions that the reporter thinks is inhibiting his right to report a legitimate story, he has to appeal to the commander's boss to get that changed.

If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn't have tenure.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

We started out as boss and player, and Wellington was almost like my father.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse. Murphy's First Corollary If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the next morning you will have a flat tire.

Even the frankest and bravest of subordinates do not talk with their boss the same way they talk with colleagues.

OK, boss, I don't mind shuffling, but I won't scratch my head.

Dick Wolf was my first boss after coming out of Sarah Lawrence.

The one important thing you do as boss is you set the standard. The minute you go in and say 'we'll let it go this time,' you set a new standard, which is lower. So you cannot do that.

The most challenging part of being a boss is that nobody will tell you if your work is suffering.

I am an animator. I feel like I'm the manager of a animation cinema factory. I am not an executive. I'm rather like a foreman, like the boss of a team of craftsmen. That is the spirit of how I work.

Accomplishing the impossible means only that the boss will add it to your regular duties.