A monster. You and your friends, all of you. Pretty monsters. It's a stage all girls go through. If you're lucky you get through it without doing any permanent damage to yourself or anyone else.

Becka might have been average in L.A., but average in L.A. is Queen of Mars in the visiting room of a federal penitentiary in North Carolina.

When I'm up for an award, there are usually two or three other things on the ballot that I like better than my own fiction.

Most of the things that I remember from childhood wouldn't make a particularly good story: rescuing worms during rainstorms, our schnauzer attacking a wheel of cheese when someone dropped it during dinner, my parents tricking us into riding Space Mountain at Disney World (we thought it was an educational people-mover kind of ride), playing Star Wars (I got to marry Harrison Ford and my sister married Luke Skywalker) in first and second grade. On the other hand, we always had lots of interesting babysitters--seminary students and friends of my parents--who told really good ghost stories.

I don't think I'm cut out for a job where you have to look professionally tidy. I prefer working in my pajamas and taking showers after lunch.

No wizard has ever made himself useful by magic, or, if they've tried, they've only made matters worse. No wizard ever stopped a war or mended a fence. It's better that they stay in their marshes, out of the way of worldly folk like farmers and soldiers and merchants and kings.

The zombies were like Canadians, in that they looked enough like real people at first, to fool you.