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.

Stars, too, were time travelers. How many of these ancient points of light were the last echoes of suns now dead? How many had been born but their light not yet come this far? If all the suns but ours collapsed tonight, how many lifetimes would it take us to realize that we were alone? I had always known the sky was full of mysteries - but not until now had I realized how full of them the earth was.

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.

Sometimes it's better not to look back.

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

Whenever I try to map things out they inevitably change. Which doesn't mean I don't map them out — I just try to embrace the better ideas that come along as my fingers are flying around the keyboard mid-draft!

Some of my favorite photos from the old days are of people who maybe didn't know how to smile. Maybe smiling in photos wasn't an accepted form of behavior back then. But the big eyes and the oversized dolls that people are carrying, and it's something about their hair - the anachronisms of these photos are really what creep me out.