You might be afraid of the dark, but the dark is not afraid of you. That’s why the dark is always close by.

Thinking about something is like picking up a stone when taking a walk, either while skipping rocks on the beach, for example, or looking for a way to shatter the glass doors of a museum. When you think about something, it adds a bit of weight to your walk, and as you think about more and more things you are liable to feel heavier and heavier, until you are so burdened you cannot take any further steps, and can only sit and stare at the gentle movements of the ocean waves or security guards, thinking too hard bout too many things to do anything else.

The hallway was lined with numbered doors, odd numbers on one side and even numbers on the other, and large ornamental vases, too large to hold flowers and too small to hold spies.

I have produced things that I would say were sincerely cheerful. But then I am reminded by other people that no one else would see them that way.

You’re just jealous of me because I’m a tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian!

You may want to keep a commonplace book which is a notebook where you can copy parts of books you think are in code, or take notes on a series of events you may have observed that are suspicious, unfortunate, or very dull. Keep your commonplace book in a safe place, such as underneath your bed, or at a nearby dairy.

Young writers should read books past bedtime and write things down in notebooks when they are supposed to be doing something else.