That would be the death of anyone - to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn't know that. If it is offered, refuse!

I believe my friends think I'm funny. All the books are full of humor. Maybe it is a quiet sort of humor that masquerades as not-much-at-all. It is certainly easy to miss.

A book can just be a description of a stick being snapped in half. If the reader is brought to feel the plight of the stick, well, you can imagine what that would be like.

I don't start with an idea or concept in the sense that I flesh out an idea or concept and set it at the center of something.

In searching for a way out of my own troubles, I had found my way into the troubles of others, some long gone, and now I was trying to find my way back out, through their troubles, as if we human beings can ever learn from one another.

A beginning idea for a book might be: a boy emerges from a hole in the ground. He enters a house. The book will take place in the first ten minutes following his arrival.

Clarity is the most important thing to me - in thinking - and so I try in the books to be as clear as possible.