Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling much curious learning in the literature of the subject and above all an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience.

Although Bill Finger literally typed the scripts in the early days he wrote the scripts from ideas that we mutually collaborated on. Many of the unique concepts and story twists also came from my own fertile imagination.

Literary imagination is an aesthetic object offered by a writer to a lover of books.

My favorite literature to read is fairly dry history. I like the framework and my imagination can do the rest.

The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination. To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.

I never did very well in math - I could never seem to persuade the teacher that I hadn't meant my answers literally.

People may think of Southern humor in terms of missing teeth and outhouse accidents but the best of it is a rich vein running through the best of Southern literature.

I am in the Master of Professional Writing program teaching Humor Writing Literary and Dramatic.

It felt as if things were literally slipping through my fingers. Things were just streaming away from me. I lost my sense of humor. I'm still looking for that.

My books are shelved in different places depending on the bookstore. Sometimes they can be found in the Mystery section sometimes in the Humor department and occasionally even in the Literature aisle which is somewhat astounding.