The nature of the world is to be calm, and enhance and support life, and evil is an absence of the inclination of matter to be at peace.

Have you ever noticed when you look in a mirror, unless youre really depressed or something, the person in the mirror generally looks a little more competent, a little more curious, a little more intelligent than you actually feel yourself to be? They often look more interesting and more soulful.

I hate New Year's Eve. One more chance to remember that you haven't yet done what you wanted. And to pretend it doesn't matter.

There were people everywhere but no one was mine, and I was no one's.

I learned failure early and mastered it.

It's been a long rocky life, with plenty of possibility but too much human ugliness.

I was just about to begin writing Mirror Mirror, within about a week of it, when September 11, 2001 happened. I found myself incapable of caring about fiction-making for a number of months.