Joe Wambaugh's A Friend. I

When I Was A Kid, Eisenhower Had Been President Forever, And All Of A Sudden, Everything In The World Was All About Jack Kennedy. I Was 12, Interested In Politics; My Father Was From Massachusetts, Had An Accent Like Kennedy.

Other People, Some Other Writers, Will Win Certain Accolades Or Sell In Far Greater Numbers Than Me - And I'm A Legitimate Best-selling Author - But I Live And Die For The Work. That's Thrilling To Me. It's Thrilling That I Do For Others What Certain Writers Did For Me When I Was A Kid.

My Guys Are Morally Weak, And They Reach Toward A Tenuous Knowledge Of Self-sacrifice, And Sometimes It's Too Late. I Find That Moving. It's Not A Life I'd Want To Live. But, Then, I'm Not Completely My Books.

I Am A Master Of Fiction. I Am Also The Greatest Crime Novelist Who Ever Lived. I Am To The Crime Novel In Specific What Tolstoy Is To The Russian Novel And What Beethoven Is To Music.

She Quoted A Dead Playwright And Called Me A Bullet With Nothing But A Future. She Understood My Lack Of Self-pity. She Knew Why I Despised Everything That Might Restrict My Forward Momentum. She Knew That Bullets Have No Conscience. They Speed Past Things And Miss Their Marks As Often As They Hit Them.