I guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy books.

There is really no end to life's little humiliations.

I loved fantasy, but I particularly loved the stories in which somebody got out of where they were and into somewhere better - as in the Chronicles Of Narnia, The Wizard Of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.

I'm happy to report that 'The New Press' is still in business to this day. But not thanks to me. I was a really bad publishing intern.

That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.

I guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy books.

More than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.