21.   His publisher was at the page-proof stage, when the author had a surprise for his editors.

22.   I realize that the authors did have to sell their books.

23.   How many authors have I met or interviewed in a long and desultory career on the periphery of literature?

24.   How much leeway should one author have to borrow the ideas of another in order to spoof or criticize them?

25.   I smiled and went back to correcting the essays that would have been lovely had their authors had some time to put into constructing them.

26.   If celebrity authors had to do it, the flow of celebrity blockbusters gushing off the presses would slow to a trickle.

27.   If the author had fallen prey to temptation and based his book merely on the sexy issues, his story would have disappeared with a thud.

28.   If the author wants to spend more, then the author has to come up with that money.

29.   If you choose wrong, say Bridget Fonda when the author had Julia Roberts in mind, is the movie spoiled for you?

30.   In a rare twist, author Wambaugh had complete control over the film version, which helped make it a gritty classic.