The prefect evening...lying down on the couch beside the bookcase and reading himself sleepy...Jim lying opposite him at the other end of the couch, also reading; the two of them absorbed in their books yet so completely aware of each other's presence.

California is a tragic country - like Palestine, like every Promised Land.

Every writer has certain subjects that they write about again and again, and . . . most people's books are just variations on certain themes.

No one ever hates without a cause.

Horror is always aware of its cause; terror never is. That is precisely what makes terror terrifying.

I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.

Sometimes awful things have their own beauty.