You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don't know everything about it. You can't.

That process by which you become a writer is a pretty lonely one. We don't have a group apprenticeship like a violinist might training for an orchestra.

I think that we are supernatural. We are unique. We're the only animals in the universe that we know of that actually have self-consciousness, a sense of time and our own mortality.

People write to me all the time to tell me that "homosexuality is an abomination." They base this on a quote in Leviticus. I think the Bible has proved to be a very mysterious and dangerous document.

Claudia... you've been a very very naughty little girl.

I was good and bad, but never wicked.

He was so excited by this little bit of intelligence that he might have gone off, perplexed, pondering for a long time. It was like reading a wonderful sentence in a book, and not being able to continue because so many possibilities were crowding his mind.