Certainly we want to protect our children from new and painful experiences that are beyond their emotional comprehension and that intensify anxiety; and to a point we can prevent premature exposure to such experiences.

Bumble-Ardy is a very wicked little child as far as I'm concerned. He's not to be trusted.

Oh, I adored Mickey Mouse when I was a child. He was the emblem of happiness and funniness. You went to the movies then, you saw two movies and a short. When Mickey Mouse came on the screen and there was his big head, my sister said she had to hold onto me. I went berserk.

We're animals. We're violent. We're criminal. We're not so far away from the gorillas and the apes, those beautiful creatures.

Venturing back further, learning is so slow. Accomplishment is so slow. Experiencing and evaluating your experience is so slow.

I don't write for children. I write, and somebody says, 'That's for children.'

It was a very difficult time. I was working on [umble-Ardy] when my partner and friend was dying of cancer. We set up a room in the house to be like a hospital room. Eugene died, and then I had bypass surgery. I was doing the book to stay sane while all this was going on.