After a time, Mr. Vollman said, If that man is the President, I believe I would prefer to stay on here. To remain within my sick-box, apart from the other place. The Reverend and myself, I am saddened to report, were obliged to agree.

At one point he told me it was, like, a crime thriller? But then at another point, it sounded like he was writing a comedy, but with sports in it. And then he said it was an “elegiac meditation on life,” but when he said it, I’m pretty sure he mispronounced “elegiac.”

As a public service, I’m supplying the general public with the following fair-use similes. Sprinkle them throughout your own writing and be amazed by the lift in the overall quality of your work.

Millions of Cats has the distinction of being this country’s longest-running in-print children’s book -- and it also has the distinction of being the most hellish murderscape to ever plague the minds of America’s youth.

You destroyed Doctorow’s masterpiece; the least you can do is understand my frustration.

Ignored in its day as a piece of spinner-rack schlock, ‘Trust Doesn’t Rust’ has aged magnificently.

What is forever. The blasted plains. Low scarps of rock. Nothing upon them but carcasses and things to become carcasses.

My beach read should help me forget the roaming packs of half-feral children who will no doubt be kicking sand in my eyes and screeching like wounded monkeys. So I don’t want to read 'Lord of the Flies' or 'Blood Meridian.'

The second song was “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” by Rod Stewart. And I remember the dad just got this look in his eye and started jerking around. For a second, I thought he was having a stroke.

Bukowski’s third novel, the autobiographical Garbageman, is about Los Angeles trash collector Henry Chinaski, who, when not working for the city’s Public Works Authority, writes short stories on a broken typewriter in his grimy cold-water flat.

Trump on Love: 'There’s nothing more terrible than an ex-spouse with a ten-ton axe to grind, and no agreement on how your common property is to be divided.'