As her analyst had told her: the deeper buried the distress, the further into the body it went. The digestive system was about as far as it could go to hide.

I hope people are reading my work in the future. I hope I have done more than frightened a couple of generations. I hope I've inspired a few people one way or another.

In a typical desperation for quick answers, easily understood, people had turned to primitive worship as the solution. With less than success. Not only had they died as quickly as the rest of the people, but they had died with terror in their hearts, with a mortal dread flowing in their very veins.

I'm sitting in my office trying to squeeze a story from my head. It is that kind of morning when you feel like melting the typewriter into a bar of steel and clubbing yourself to death with it. (“Advance Notice”)

If you go too far in fantasy and break the string of logic, and become nonsensical, someone will surely remind you of your dereliction....Pound for pound, fantasy makes a tougher opponent for the creative person.

I had to write about realistic circumstances. Thats the way my brain works. And I think that gave me a sort of place in the field.

I could never write about strange kingdoms. I could never do Harry Potter or anything like that. Even when I did science-fiction, I didnt write about foreign planets and distant futures. I certainly never did fantasies about trolls living under bridges.