Sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. It's what you say when you spill a cup of coffee or throw a gutter ball when you're bowling with the girls in the league. True sorrow is as rare as true love.

I have to remind myself that some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright.

Stories are artifacts, not really made things which we create and can take credit for, but pre-existing objects which we dig up.

Writing is like sex. The more you think about it, the harder it is to do. It's better not to think about it so much and just let it happen.

If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.

I hope you liked them, Reader; that they did for you what any good story should do--make you forget the real stuff weighing on your mind for a little while and take you away to a place you've never been. It's the most amiable sort of magic I know.

I think most of us can remember from our own childhood, just in the Disney cartoons, things that frightened us profoundly. For me it was Bambi, the scene when the forest was on fire. That was something I had nightmares about. I can't imagine being a little kid of eight and seeing Night Of The Living Dead with living corpses eating the flesh of living people.