Death is when the monsters get you.

You cannot friend a hawk, they said, unless you are a hawk yourself, alone and only a sojourner in the land, without friends or the need of them.

If I have to spend time in purgatory before going to one place or the other, I guess I'll be all right as long as there's a lending library.

A little talent is a good thing to have if you want to be a writer. But the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.

Mrs. Cole was a perfect democrat. She hated all kids equally.

And people who don’t dream, who don’t have any kind of imaginative life, they must… they must go nuts. I can’t imagine that.

Part of my function as a writer is to dream awake. And that usually happens. If I sit down to write in the morning, in the beginning of that writing session and the ending of that session, I'm aware that I'm writing. I'm aware of my surroundings. It's like shallow sleep on both ends, when you go to bed and when you wake up. But in the middle, the world is gone and I'm able to see better.