I had been writing since I was pretty small, and I've always been telling these stories about doors and finding other worlds within our own.

If you are a conscious human being who has opinions about the world, then you will unconsciously put your own perspective into the book.

I liked this idea: that peculiarness wasn't a deficiency, but an abundance; that it wasn't we who lacked something normals had, but they who lacked peculiarness. That we were more, not less.

If I never went home, what exactly would I be missing? I pictured my cold cavernous house, my friendless town full of bad memories, the utterly unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. It had never once occurred to me, I realized, to refuse it.

Do you ever find yourself climbing into an open grave during a bombing raid and wish you'd just stayed in bed?

Laughing doesn't make bad things worse any more than crying makes them better. It doesn't mean you don't care, or that you've forgotten. It just means you're human.

Sometimes it's better not to look back.