You can go through your whole life telling yourself that life is logical, life is prosaic, life is sane. Above all sane. And I think it is. I've had a lot of time to think about that. And what I keep coming back to is [her] dying declaration: 'So you understand that when we increase the number of variables, the axioms themselves never change.'

He supposed that even in Hell, people got an occasional sip of water, if only so they could appreciate the full horror of unrequited thirst when it set in again.

I see things, that's all. Write enough stories and every shadow on the floor looks like a footprint; every line in the dirt like a secret message.

Writing is seduction.

I think it's relatively easy for people to accept something like telepathy or precognition or teleplasm because their willingness to believe doesn't cost them anything. It doesn't keep them awake nights. But the idea that the evil that men do lives after them is unsettling.

I don't really get philosophical, but I believe that nice people are strong and usually in my horror stories, I don't like to write about the old standard where some rotten guy gets chased by a mean spirit that gets him in the end.I'd rather write about nice people that are menaced from outside by some sort of evil power and who sort of slug it out.

Kids know they can't make it alone, yet at the same time, built into each one of us, is a survival ethic. It says, "Nobody cares and you have to look out for yourself and if you don't, you'll die." These two things work against each other. I think most kids are very frightened of their parents, and that's what all fairy tales reflect: Parents will fail you and you'll be left on your own. But, of course, everything comes out right in the end and the parents take you back.