I took comfort, as a kid, in knowing that things had always been as awful and as wonderful as they were now, that the world was always on the edge of total destruction.

I don't do a lot of foisting, because when it comes to books I don't really like to be foisted upon.

There are no moments more painful for a parent than those in which you contemplate your child's perfect innocence of some imminent pain, misfortune, or sorrow. That innocence (like every kind of innocence children have) is rooted in their trust of you, one that you will shortly be obliged to betray; whether it is fair or not, whether you can help it or not, you are always the ultimate guarantor or destroyer of that innocence.

I do have a collection of mid-century, small-press science fiction and fantasy hardcovers that is my most focused and dedicated collection. Everything else I tend more to acquire or amass than collect. I have vinyl records I listen to all the time when I work. But I don’t collect records. I just buy records where the price seems right and it’s music I actually listen to.

A true storyteller is really good at writing himself into a corner and then finding a way out of that corner

He had no idea of how long his life would one day seem to have gone on; how daily present the absence of love would come to feel. “Just watch me,” he said.

I feel that in the past, my style has shown itself to be capable of handling dark and light in the same paragraph, or even in the same sentence. That's something I almost take for granted. I think it was more a concern to get the details right and persuasively recreate the world I was trying to write about.