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

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.

When you're writing, at least when I'm writing, I don't think about themes and I try not to sermonize with any particular message.

But these weren't the kind of monsters that had tentacles and rotting skin, the kind a seven-year-old might be able to wrap his mind around-they were monsters with human faces, in crisp uniforms, marching in lockstep, so banal you don't recognize them for what they are until it's too late.

I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.