Of all the questions I'm asked, the most difficult is, "How does it feel to be famous?" Since I'm not, that question always catches me with a feeling of surrealism....I've got three kids and I've changed all their diapers, and when it's two o'clock in the morning and you're changing something that's sort of special delivery with one eye open and one eye shut you don't feel famous.

A writer's notebook is the best way in the world to immortalize bad ideas. My idea about a good idea is one that sticks around and sticks around and sticks around.

I've always thought it would be fun to update "Hansel and Gretel." I'd have these white parents in the suburbs with an income of fifty or sixty thousand dollars. Daddy loses his job, and the wicked stepmother says, "We could get along, we could keep our Mastercharge, if you'd just get rid of those shitty kids." Finally the father hires a limo and tells the driver, "Drop 'em off on Lenox Avenue in Harlem at two in the morning." These two little white kids land there. They're menaced. And this supposedly nice black lady says, "Would you like some candy?"

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.

See the BEAR of fearsome size! All the WORLD'S within his eyes. TIME grows thin, the past is a riddle; The TOWER awaits you in the middle.

Yes, I’ve made a great deal of dough from my fiction, but I never set a single word down on paper with the thought of being paid for it...I have written because it fulfilled me. ... I did it for the pure joy of the things. And if you can do it for joy, you can do it forever.

If we don't have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.