You hope that people read your book and say "Yes, this is the way it is or could be." But then you have no way of knowing until the reader reads the book. Actually, the critical response doesn't worry me. I've had very few reviews that have upset me.

It came to me that hell would not be fire and smoke after all but arctic, everything white and frigid. Hell would be not anger but indifference.

I'm not a reader of young adult fiction for the simple reason that these novelists are writing for adolescents, so they are not writing for me.

I write very tightly, and my big fear is boring people. I want them to read quickly, stopped in their tracks. I resist indulging myself.

Don't miss the bus, boy. You're missing a lot of things in the world, better not miss that bus.

I read a lot of detective stories because they always deliver. They give you a beginning, a middle, and an end - a resolution. The modern novels I read don't always deliver because I'm looking essentially for a story. As in Shakespeare, "The play's the thing." In particular I read detective stories for pacing, plot and suspense.

Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence.