Zombie books were going to be my passion projects, but certainly not pay the bills. I thought I was going to have to get a real job on a sitcom or something, and have my zombie books to remind myself I was still a writer at heart. I never thought I could actually pay my bills and write what I wanted.

You can't blame anyone else, ... , no one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices.

Zombies let us explore notions of the apocalypse - no water, food, medical care, the government imploding - while letting us sleep at night.

Secrecy is a vacuum and nothing fills a vacuum like paranoid speculation.

The highest distinction is service to others.

Gu was a worrier, a neurotic curmudgeon. If he had a headache, it was a brain tumor; if it looked like rain, this year's harvest was ruined. This was his way of controlling the situation, his lifelong strategy for always coming out ahead. Now, when reality looked more dire than any of his fatalisitic predictions, he had no choice but to turn tail and charge in the opposite direction.

If you believe you can accomplish everything by "cramming" at the eleventh hour, by all means, don't lift a finger now. But you may think twice about beginning to build your ark once it has already started raining