We have to learn everything we do.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

For a long time I thought I was a poet, but that's a high title to claim.

I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.

Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.

There's a hunger for stories in all of us, adults too. We need stories so much that we're even willing to read bad books to get them, if the good books won't supply them.

A story, to me, has a particular sprite, like the angel of the spirit of that story - and it's my job to attend to what it wants to do.