It's true that I don't rearrange that much in the fiction, but I feel if you change even one name or the order of one event then you have to call it fiction or you get all the credits of non-fiction without paying the price.

You gotta help me get out of here! They're trying to kill me. I'm gonna die. I've got $35,000 missing. Those two women took it. They're trying to kill me. You gotta help me. Cut me loose! Cut me loose!

Writing is writing, and stories are stories. Perhaps the only true genres are fiction and non-fiction. And even there, who can be sure?

Combat isn't where you might die -- though that does happen -- it's where you find out whether you get to keep on living. Don't underestimate the power of that revelation. Don't underestimate the things young men will wager in order to play that game one more time.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

أحياناً نقود أنفسنا للطريق المهلك علماً بذلك .. ليس رغبة بالهلاك، بل أملاً بتغيير النتيجة