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.

Have you ever had one of those days when something just seems to be trying to tell you somebody?

Young man," he said, "understand this: there are two Londons. There's London Above―that's where you lived―and then there's London Below―the Underside―inhabited by the people who fell through the cracks in the world. Now you're one of them. Good night.

Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.

I was the kind of kid whose parents would drop him off at the local town library on their way to work, and I'd go and work my way through the children's area.

Books make great gifts because they have whole worlds inside of them. And it's much cheaper to buy somebody a book than it is to buy them the whole world!

Gods die. And when they truly die they are unmourned and unremembered. Ideas are more difficult to kill than people, but they can be killed, in the end.