...maybe the world needs a cadre of smartasses to liven things up, who knows?

I got letters from people that have had peculiar psychic experiences, experiences with the dead - sometimes fairly tranquil experiences and sometimes very terrifying experiences. I do believe that a lot of them are sincere. I do believe, also, that some of them may be misguided. But, I think the majority of them have experienced something.

If you're going into a very dark place, then you should take a bright light, and shine it on everything. If you don't want to see, why in God's name would you dare the dark at all?

I believe these stories exist because we sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives: the parent who punches instead of kissing, the auto accident that takes a loved one, the cancer we one day discover living in our own bodies. If such terrible occurrences were acts of darkness, they might actually be easier to cope with. But instead of being dark, they have their own terrible brilliance. . . and none shine so bright as the acts of cruelty we sometimes perpetrate in our own families.

And will I tell you that these three lived happily ever after? I will not, for no one ever does. But there was happiness. And they did live.

It was always a pleasure to write. I can never think of a time when I just hacked something out to fulfil a contract or meet a deadline. I might have hacked things out, but it was always stuff I loved.

I'm afraid of all kinds of things. I'm afraid of failing at whatever story I'm writing - that it won't come up for me, or that I won't be able to finish it.