If God is an author and the universe is the biggest novel ever written, I may feel as if I'm the lead character in the story, but like every man and woman on Earth, I am a suporting player in one of billions of subplots. You know what happens to supporting players. Too often they are killed off in chapter 3, or in chapter 10, or in chapter 35. A supporting player always has to be looking over his shoulder.

No one's life should be rooted in fear. We are born for wonder, for joy, for hope, for love, to marvel at the mystery of existence, to be ravished by the beauty of the world, to seek truth and meaning, to acquire wisdom, and by our treatment of others to brighten the corner where we are.

In my books, I never portray violence as a reasonable solution to a problem. If the lead characters in the story are driven to it, it's at the extreme end of their experience.

I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I am old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless.

I enjoy the hell out of writing but don't like what follows: promotion and publicity, which I always strive to keep to a minimum, sometimes to my publisher's dismay.

The truth was stranger than the official fiction.

If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not in fact his friends.