Someone killed my Mother and my Father and my Sister?" "Yes, someone did." "A Man?" "A Man." "Which means," said Bod, "you're asking the wrong question." Silas raised an eyebrow. "How so?" "Well," said Bod. "If I go outside in the world, the question isn't who will keep me safe from him?" "No?" "No. It's who will keep him safe from me?

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.

Picking one of your favorite creation or character is like picking the best one of your children! I'm not sure it really works. My very favorite characters tend to be ones I can go back to and look at, and have no idea how they popped out of my head.

The strangest part of being so well known is definitely getting a New Yorker profile. It's a wonderful, strange process, like seeing yourself through a distorting mirror.

The cat wrinkled its nose and managed to look unimpressed. "Calling cats," it confided, "tends to be a rather overrated activity. Might as well call a whirlwind.

The first author I remember being obsessed by, actually realizing 'I like the way he writes and I like the way he tells stories,' was C.S. Lewis and the 'Narnia' books.