I don't know if any single book made me want to write. C.S. Lewis was the first writer to make me aware that somebody was writing the book I was reading - these wonderful parenthetical asides to the reader.

Imagine a mosaic picture of a house in the country: lots of red and blue and yellow and black and brown and white and a dozen different shades of green tiles which make a beautiful picture if you stand back far enough. All the little red squares are true - true things, true places, true feelings. But the red squares aren't the picture. All the rest of it is lies and stories, often within the same sentence.

Media. I think I have heard of her. Isn't she the one who killed her children?

Everything here is so weak, little girl. Everything breaks so easily. They want such simple things.

A nice, easy place for freedom of speech to be eroded is comics, because comics are a natural target whenever an election comes up.

There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question. And the reply was, Eat the strawberries. The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now.

I really like being able to laugh at my own jokes.