Until we see each other again, keep your head together, read some good books, be useful, be happy.

The good folks mostly win, courage usually triumphs over fear, the family dog hardly ever contracts rabies: these are things I knew at twenty-five, and things I still know now, at the age of 25 x 2. But I know something else as well: there's a place in most of us where the rain is pretty much constant, the shadows are always long, and the woods are full of monsters. It is good to have a voice in which the terrors of such a place can be articulated and its geography partially described, without denying the sunshine and clarity that fill so much of our ordinary lives. (viii)

...knowing that to be a librarian was to come as close as any human being can to sitting in the peak-seat of eternity's engine.

The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time.

I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries.

I and everyone else in this world live in what is probably the most difficult times that have ever been. We are facing total thermonuclear destruction; and, if you can make someone believe in a ghost or a demon or a vampire in the face of that, you are doing well. From my own personal point of view, I don't think just blood and guts is enough. At least, it isn't for me. Maybe it will turn someone's stomach; but, I'm not sure that is literature or even entertainment.

Talent is a dull knife that will cut nothing unless it is wielded with great force.