Often you will discover that the harder you work, and the more wisely you work, the luckier you get. But there is luck, and it helps.

You could fire a machine gun randomly through the pages of Lord of the Rings and never hit any women.

CHOW^TM contained spun, plaited, and woven protein molecules, capped and coded, carefully designed to be ignored by even the most ravenous digestive tract enzymes; no-cal sweeteners; mineral oils replacing vegetable oils; fibrous materials, colorings, and flavorings. The end result was a foodstuff almost indistinguishable from any other except for two things. Firstly, the price, which was slightly higher, and secondly, the nutritional content, which was roughly equivalent to that of a Sony Walkman.

Nobody will ever hurt her. She’ll just smile her faint vague wonderful smile and walk away.

I like horror, but I tend to like it as seasoning. I'd get very bored if I was told I had to write a horror novel. I'd love to write a novel with horror elements, but too much, and it doesn't taste of anything else.

She was the storm, she was the lightning, she was the adult world with all its power and all its secrets and all its foolish casual cruelty.

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.