Everyone has a bizarre childhood and unusual life experiences, whether they know it or not. There's no such thing as a normal childhood. What's useful in writing weird fiction is learning how to understand and articulate those moments of personal, particular strangeness.

The initial spark usually has something to do with panic -- I'm due to turn in a story to a workshop or an editor. It's a terrible working method.

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

Everyone knows that wizards are pigheaded and come to bad ends.

The Customer isn't always right. Sometimes the customer is an a**hole. That's the first rule of retail.

I'm grateful when stories come in a rush, although I keep an eye on them afterwards, to see whether they hold together. It's harder to judge the ones that took so long to finish. With those, I've lost perspective. Mostly I'm just glad that I can be done with them.

Remember, when you don’t know what to do, it never hurts to play Scrabble. It’s like reading the I Ching or tea leaves.