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.

It's alright to feel fear, but sometimes a very bad idea to show it.

Kids absolutely not reading. I think it's because they're so screen-oriented [TVs, computers, smartphones]. They do read - girls in particular read a lot. They have a tendency to go toward the paranormal, romances, Twilight and stuff like that. And then it starts to taper off because other things take precedence, like the Kardashian sisters.

It don't matter if you believe in God Nick, he believes in you.

It's exciting and it's thrilling and it's not particularly threatening, because they're not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that's a shorthand for all the feelings that they're not ready to deal with yet.

She is a cat with a burning tail, an ant under a microscope, a fly about to lose its wings to the curious plucking fingers of a third-grader on a rainy day, a game for bored children with no bodies and the whole universe at their feet.

Go now. Our journey is done. And may we meet again, in the clearing, at the end of the path.