My life's been too much of a self-created vocation. And there are times when I think I've done everything in the name of defiance.

And what if I never go of my own free will? Will you pitch me from some window so that I must fly or fall? Will you bolt all shutters after me? You had better, because I'll knock and knock and knock until I fall down dead. I'll have no wings that take me away from you.

I was a newborn vampire, weeping at the beauty of the night.

I broke with my religion in college.

I'm going to keep on dealing with the supernatural in a lot of ways.

I don't know why one author writes westerns while another writes detective novels. You don't know why. You go where the intensity is. I feel most comfortable writing about monsters. It's possible that I feel like a monster myself. Or maybe it's because we all have a monster inside of us, a vampire, a ghost, a witch or a werewolf. You do it because it works and it feels really right and authentic.

Phil was mumbling that Reuben might become a writer after all and writers had a way of "redeeming everything that ever happens to them.