As a journalist, I would talk to writers, directors, creative people, and discover that for an awful lot of them, the moment they became successful, that was all they were allowed to do. So you end up talking to the bestselling science-fiction author who wrote a historical-fiction novel that everybody loved, but no one would publish.

Entropy and optimism: the twin forces that make the world go around.

Real life doesn't have to be convincing, but fiction does.

The truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do with it.

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness.

I don't just randomly kill people... I kill people when it's funny.

People talk about escapism as if it's a bad thing... Once you've escaped, once you come back, the world is not the same as when you left it. You come back to it with skills, weapons, knowledge you didn't have before. Then you are better equipped to deal with your current reality.