His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.

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.

She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone.

I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.

Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.

I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.

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