“The characters and plot in this book are pure fiction. Any similarity to real persons living or dead, elected, convicted, or merely toppled from power, is entirely coincidental.”

“The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Past events are described in a fictitious manner, future events are described as they will indeed occur, unless they are disrupted by historical agitators, which is beyond the author's control. For now.”

“All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental.”

“The flimsy little protestations that mark the front gate of every novel, the solemn statements that any resemblance to real persons living or dead is entirely coincidental, are fraudulent every time. A writer has no other material to make his people from than the people of his experience ... The only thing the writer can do is to recombine parts, suppress some characterisitics and emphasize others, put two or three people into one fictional character, and pray the real-life prototypes won't sue.”

“When I think of highly plotted novels I think of detective fiction or mystery fiction, the kind of work that always produces a few dead bodies. But these bodies are basically plot points, not worked-out characters. The book's plot either moves inexorably toward a dead body of flows directly from it, and the more artificial the situation the better. Readers can play off their fears by encountering the death experience in a superficial way. A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot, makes it less fearful by containing it in a kind of game format. [from an interview with DeCurtis]”

“Character, I think, is the single most important thing in fiction. You might read a book once for its interesting plot—but not twice.”