I'd written my first novel for adults, which was called Basic Eight and was set in a high school, and we were having a devil of a time selling it. It ended up in the hands of an editor of a children's publishing house, for which it was entirely inappropriate. She said, "Well, we can't publish this, but I think you should write something for children," which I thought was a really terrible idea.

Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.

I love meeting people who have absolutely no sense of irony. It's really fascinating to imagine what it would be like to go through life without understanding even the most basic of ironies.

Fetching objects for people who are too lazy to fetch them for themselves is never a pleasant task, particularly when the people are insulting you.

There is no worse sound in the world than someone who cannot play the violin but insists on doing so anyway.

I wrote Rick before I was published, and I had no vision of it, really. It was just a story that occurred to me, and that put its little claws in my brain, and I wrote it, and I showed it to a couple people, and they all said, "This is ghastly."

I always think it's silly when people talk about works of culture taking risks. Because there's not any risk involved.