Classic authors should be older than I am, and wiser, and on-top of all their deadlines.

Nobody gets through life without losing a few things on the way.

Some hats can only be worn if you're willing to be jaunty, to set them at an angle and to walk beneath them with a spring in your stride as if you're only a step away from dancing. They demand a lot of you.

There are characters in some short stories who exist as people, and there are other characters in different short stories who exist as purely literary constructs. You know, the young man in "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire" - I probably got that right - is a literary construct, and enjoys being a literary construct. He has no life off stage, whereas the young men in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" were as near to being real human beings as I could possibly get them.

I am an academic," said Professor Mandalay, "and thus have no finely developed senses that would be comprehensible to anyone who has not ever needed to grade papers without actually reading the blessed things.

Librarians are the coolest people out there doing the hardest job out there on the frontlines. And every time I get to encounter or work with librarians, I'm always impressed by their sheer awesomeness.

The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow to the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe that will grow to slay me.