Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.

The youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation.

We are what we imagine ourselves to be.

Nothing in this book is true.

Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.

The book was Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension, by Kilgore Trout. It was about people whose mental diseases couldn't be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension, and three-dimensional Earthling doctors couldn't see those causes at all, or even imagine them.

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.