I didn't like people rewriting my dialogue. I didn't like the fact that we'd start a comic with the Joker, and by the time we inked it, he would have turned into the Scarecrow.

Shadow had heard too many people telling each other not to repress their feelings, to let their emotions out, let the pain go. Shadow thought there was a lot to be said for bottling up emotions. If you did it long enough and deep enough, he suspected, pretty soon you wouldn't feel anything at all.

Set your fantasies in the here and now and then, if challenged, claim to be writing Magical Realism.

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

America was, to them, the place that good people went to when they died. They were prepared to believe just about anything could happen in America.

There was Virginia Boote, the food and restaurant critic, who had once been a great beauty but was now a grand and magnificent ruin, and who delighted in her ruination.

You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.