I don't read a lot of the sports because I think people sometimes either build it up or you have this guy that hates sports that is going to write bad about it so I figure I'm not going to read it. Because I'm not going to let him put an idea into my head.

If I could have married my wife and been a sports writer for the past 30 years I wouldn't be sitting here - but I don't think I'd be sitting someplace where I was sorry to be sitting.

It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.

I think having a vision can make someone an influential man. I'm not talking about acting or anything like that I'm talking about people I admire whether it's a writer or a musician or a sports figure or a politician whatever.

I find interesting characters or lessons that resonate with people and sometimes I write about them in the sports pages sometimes I write them in a column sometimes in a novel sometimes a play or sometimes in nonfiction. But at the core I always say to myself 'Is there a story here? Is this something people want to read?'

Golf is a game in which you yell 'fore ' shoot six and write down five.

I work in an old tradition that goes back to the ancient Greeks. You hold a mirror to crime to see what's happening in society. I could never write a crime story just for the sake of it because I always want to talk about certain things in society.

I was training to be a lawyer... I was president of the law society at Glasgow University and my bass guitarist was my secretary of my law society the lead guitarist and writer worked at the law firm that I worked.

The writer is the person who stands outside society independent of affiliation and independent of influence.

I believe that writers unless they consider themselves terribly exquisite are at heart people who live by night a little bit outside society moving between delinquency and conformity.