I had a connoisseur's... appreciation of fear.

From a tale one expects a bit of wildness, of exaggeration and dramatic effect. The tale has no inherent concern with decorum, balance or harmony. ... A tale may not display a great deal of structural, psychological, or narrative sophistication, though it might possess all three, but it seldom takes its eye off its primary goal, the creation of a particular emotional state in its reader. Depending on the tale, that state could be wonder, amazement, shock, terror, anger, anxiety, melancholia, or the momentary frisson of horror.

I liked the place I came from. But a lot of what I liked about it was that I had come from there.

I was once told by a very well-respected editor, "Category horror is about good vs. evil, that's all it is." And I thought, "That's why it's no good. That's why I find that stuff unreadable." One is looking for something that's a little more emotionally complex and nuanced.

Could you defeat a cloud, a dream, a poem?

There were a lot of adventure books for boys, historical novels by Kenneth Roberts, and whatever mystery novels the alarmed librarian imagined might not corrupt an eager but innocent youth.

When, in the third book, we do learn the identity of the Blue Rose murderer, the information comes in a muted, nearly off-hand manner, and the man has died long before.