I don't know about the rest of you who have little voices, but something about mine made me feel completely compelled to listen to it.

"Hello, Max," he said quietly, searching my face. "How do you feel?" Which was a ten on the 'imbecilic question' scale of one to ten. "Why, I feel fine, Jeb," I said brightly. "How about you?" "Any nausea? Headache?" "Yep. And it's standing here talking to me."

For me, "Zoo" has always been a fable. It has nothing to do with realism. It's a fable about what man is doing to the world, and the animals have retribution. But in the real world, this would not happen. But in the world of 1984, this kind of thing can happen in a story.

If Fang is in any way harmed while I'm gone-if he gets a hangnail-you won't see another morning. Are we clear on that?

I think sometimes we give people a lot of credit just because they're writing nice sentences even if it isn't adding up to much.

A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.

I was crazily, deeply, incredibly, joyously, terrifiedly in love.