EB: No offense taken.

RBP: And there's a book out about me from some German scholar, and I haven't read it. Joan [Parker] tried it and couldn't stand it. It may be "heavy." I do what I do. I write the book I want to read. They send me money, I write another one, they send me more money. I give the money to my wife and children, and life goes on.

I don't care what someone thinks of me 100 years from now. I think I'm as good a writer as there is now alive. I mean, there's no false modesty here! But if nobody else thinks so, I'm okay.

The thing about Joan that's crucial to understanding me is that when I married her and had those kids, I did everything I ever needed to do in life, and the rest of this is all, you know, syrup on the ice cream. So I don't complicate it - I'm relaxed about it all. And it comes relatively easy to me. I'm not agonizing - I'm doing four books a year. I'm not pressing myself beyond endurance. I've got nothing much else I like to do, so I do that. I don't play golf, and... I write my books.

So I don't feel a lot of pressure to make deadlines. My next deadline is six books from now or something, so I'm already five books ahead.

Elmore Leonard said to me once, "This is the best job in the world, isn't it?"

And I said, "Yeah."

You stay home, you write, they send you money. People think you're important.

EB: That kind of leads me to my next question. You talked a little about what you read and don't read. I wanted to ask you particularly about Elmore Leonard and other authors who you enjoy. That said, I did read once that you don't read a lot of fiction.

RBP: I don't read a lot of fiction. I don't read much detective fiction. I greatly admire 'Dutch' Leonard. I read everything he writes and wish he'd write more. He's a good guy. We know each other, we're passively friendly. We bump into each other around the circuit and stuff like that. So I read Dutch. That's about it for detective fiction, pretty much it for fiction.

Every now and then I'll reread Chandler. I read some non-fiction. I'm currently reading Thomas Friedman's book, The Lexus on the Olive Tree. I read his previous one. I think he's got great insight into how things go in the Middle East. I read Jonathan Lear's book on Freud with classical philosophers called Open Minded. My standard joke is that I didn't understand it but that it makes a great answer to questions like this. I read that kind of stuff. I read McCullough's book on Truman - he's a great guy, I love David McCullough. I'm so pleased it came to him late and he reached his potential. I think he's a brilliant historian. And I'm halfway through some book on the human genome but I can't remember the author of it.