I used to act in college, but always comedy. Didn't do [William] Shakespeare - did Ben Jonson.

Somebody has been a complete ratbag all their life and they've gotten away with it, and they die happy and rich, we so much want to believe that they're going off to the halls of judgment, that their heart will be weighed against the feather of truth, that it will be heavy with sin and it will be eaten by a crocodile. It's almost essential to our well-being to have a fallback position like that. It may appear as if you've gotten away with it, but you'll pay for it later.

As human beings, we are always torn between individual freedom and the ability of choose our actions, and the need for at least enough social structure so that anarchy, chaos, and warlordery - or the war of all against all - can be avoided.

Genres aren't closed boxes. Stuff flows back and forth across the borders all the time.

It doesn't really matter what "genre" your book is. What matters is that it's a good book of its kind. Whatever that kind may be.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer, an almost physical nerve, the kind you need to walk a log across a river.

The thing about delirium is you think it's great, but it actually isn't.