My books do have a sort of romantic community at the end - people coming together. But on a more basic level, I always see them as being about power, in the same way that Harry Potter books are pitched to a population of young people who really have no power.

Some little part of themselves for someone in the future to discover. Maybe a thought. We were here. We built this. A reminder.

If I can't be beautiful, I want to be invisible.

Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.

I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I'd never have. Burn the Amazon rain forests. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn't afford to eat, and smother the French beaches I'd never see. I wanted the whole world to hit bottom.

Burn the Louvre, and wipe your ass with the Mona Lisa. This way at least, God would know our names.

You grow up to become living proof of your parents' limitations. Their less-than masterpiece.