And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God's language - it's better, it's finer, it's language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

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.

Rage-the biggest, truest rage of her adult life-had invaded her like a fever, but it wasn't like any fever she had known previously. It circulated like weird serum, cold on the right side of her body, then hot on the left, where her heart was. It seemed to come nowhere near her head, which remained clear.

True sorrow is as rare as true love.

Fantasy has a better chance of lasting than a lot of other things. The Hobbit and the Narnia books, they seem to get handed down father to son, mother to daughter. Because they're set in a fantasy world, they can remain relevant.

My view is that organized religion is a very dangerous tool that's been misused by a lot of people.

Let's face it. No kid in high school feels as though they fit in.