I could list hundreds of words I've come up against in the course of my work that did not exist in the era of which I was writing and for which I never could find a suitably old-time, archaic or obsolete substitute.
When I got back to Madison Avenue, I realized that copywriters made more than artists, so I switched.
When I was living in Mexico and writing a book called 'Aztec,' I had to make a deliberate effort to ignore a lot of the 'typically Mexican landscape' around me - banana and citrus groves, roses and carnations, burros and toros - because they did not exist in Mexico in the 15th century, the time of my book.
To get into Afghanistan, I bribed my way into a camel caravan of smugglers.
I do not know what she was thinking, but I was remembering the years we have lived together, yet never together, and what a waste they have been--of each other, and of love, which is the most unpardonable waste there is. Love and time, those are the only two things in all the world and all of life that cannot be bought, but only spent.
