I am responsible for myself. I am exactly who I eventually wanted myself to be, I guess, without consciously knowing what I wanted me to be.

If you let the image of the messenger get in the way of whatever message there may be, however large or small, that's your problem, not his.

Entertain, yes. That goes without saying. But a good writer does that automatically, it's built into the machine. Telling a thumpingly good, mesmerizing story is what one does without question. But beyond that, any writer worth his/her hire knows that all writing, one way or another, is subversive. It is guerrilla warfare against the status quo.

I am not one of these people who instantly takes umbrage when he's corrected or - I love being corrected.

And we passed through the cavern of rats. And we passed through the path of boiling steam. And we passed through the country of the blind. And we passed through the slough of despond. And we passed through the vale of tears. And we came, finally, to the ice caverns.

I am responsible for myself. I am exactly who I eventually wanted myself to be, I guess, without consciously knowing what I wanted me to be.

People on the outside think there's something magical about writing, that you go up in the attic at midnight and cast the bones and come down in the morning with a story, but it isn't like that. You sit in back of the typewriter and you work, and that's all there is to it.