What I'm always trying to do with every book is to recreate the effect of the stories we heard as children in front of campfires and fireplaces - the ghost stories that engaged us.

We've spent so much time judging what other people created that we've created very, very little of our own.

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because it's only intangibles, ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die.

Public taste changes and the aesthetic of a culture changes over time, so the idea isn't to appeal to the aesthetic of the moment and what people will like right now; the idea is to somehow keep yourself in the public memory so that as taste evolves it will eventually come to embrace your thing. So, it's about writing to be remembered rather than writing to be liked.

I just want one person I can rescue and I want one person who needs me. Who can't live without me. I want to be a hero, but not just one time.

No matter how many luxuries you get, something will be missing. No matter how carefully you choose, you'll never be totally happy.

The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.