It's probably a form of childish curiosity that keeps me going as a fiction writer. I ... want to open everybody's bureau drawers and see what they keep in there. I'm nosy.

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.

My own view of myself was that I was small and innocuous, a marshmallow compared to the others. I was a poor shot with a 22, for instance, and not very good with an ax. It took me a long time to figure out that the youngest in a family of dragons is still a dragon from the point of view of those who find dragons alarming.

There would be no Sherlock Holmes if it were not for serial publication.

The animals have no need for speech, why talk when you are a word.

The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.

How shrunk, how dwindled, in our times Creation's mighty seed - For Man has broke the Fellowship With murder, lust, and greed.