They kissed for the first time then in the cold spring rain, though neither one of them now knew that it was raining. Tristran's heart pounded in his chest as if it was not big enough to contain all the joy that it held. He opened his eyes as he kissed the star. Her sky-blue eyes stared back into his, and in her eyes he could see no parting from her.

I found English to be a sort of Thomas Hardy aversion therapy.

I wanted to write something that would be a comedy in the sense of making people feel happier when they finish it than they did when began it.

There's a glorious sense of freedom in comedy, just allowing myself to tell jokes, allowing myself to interrupt myself and tell old African folk stories that I made up - or didn't - and Jamaican stories.

Coraline wondered why so few of the adults she met made any sense.

There are people you do not want to upset in the world - the politically disenfranchized who feel they have nothing to lose, those who feel that the time has come for revolution ... then out on the edges beyond any of those are science fiction fans whose favorite show has been canceled in an untimely way.

There was nowhere they could have gone and they went there anyway.