I have a secret goal with my editor - he has asthma and uses his inhaler, and after I send him a new manuscript, I'll have his assistant phone me and tell me how many times he had to get his inhaler out while reading a draft. It's my secret laugh meter.

If there’s any trick to doing a job you hate . . . Mrs. Clark says it’s to find a job you hate even more.

No matter how bad things get, you can still walk away.

Some stories, you use up. Others use you up.

Everyone is equal and everyone is forced to participate; you can't just be a spectator.

Now is the autumn of our ennui.

The unreal is more powerful than the real. Because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. 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. If you can change the way people think. The way they see themselves. The way they see the world. You can change the way people live their lives. That's the only lasting thing you can create.