Why don't we all just go crazy when we know were going to croak? Because the mind's a monkey. You put things in departments and you go ahead. You go on and plan for the future and assume that the future's going to work out okay. Yet we know that sooner or later we're all going to be eating worms, whether it's fifty years or sixty. It might be tomorrow. It might happen today.

For me, good description usually consists of a few well-chosen details that will stand for everything else.

I know your mother lives in your head - almost everyone's mother does, I guess - but you can't let her have her way on this one

I think the best writers are voracious readers who pick up the cadences and the feel of narration through a number of different books. And you begin by maybe copying the style of writers that really knocked you out.

People can be stunningly unobservant.

I hardly ever read mainstream fiction that deals with life as it is. I like an element of fantasy, something that isn`t quite of the real world.

And suddenly it didn't seem to matter any more, nothing would matter if she could turn over, turn over and see the stars, turn over and look once and die.