...if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don't even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is-- excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms.

Good writers touch life often.

We can't live alone in any society. But the best way to help a society or group, is to be the best individual in it that we can be.

Like every beginner, I have thought you could beat, pummel and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity, and dies.

Edgar Allen Poe really started me when I was 8. I fell in love with everything of his.

Teachers are to inspire; librarians are to fulfill.

Mars is empty now. Five hundred years from now, it'll be full of people.