Loads of children read books about dinosaurs, underwater monsters, dragons, witches, aliens, and robots. Essentially, the people who read SF, fantasy and horror haven't grown out of enjoying the strange and weird.

I remember vividly what it's like to read as a 10-year-old - that passionate inhabiting of a book.

The dead are way more organized than the living.

The problem with most genre fantasy is that it's not nearly fantastic enough. It's escapist, but it can't escape.

I'd never understood the injunction not to regret anything, couldn't see how that wasn't cowardice.

We would never call inexplicable little insights hunches, for fear of drawing the universe's attention. But they happened, and you knew you had been in the proximity of one that had come through if you saw a detective kiss his or her fingers and touch his or her chest where a pendant to Warsha, patron saint of inexplicable inspirations, would, theoretically, hang.

I think the role of science fiction is not at all to prophesy. I think it is to tell interesting, vivid, strange stories that at their best are dreamlike intense versions and visions of today.