A lot of fairy tales are thinly disguised hostility raps against parents. Kids know that they can't make it on their own, that if they were left alone, they would die.

He pointed toward the silhouettes on the side of the [bathrooms] instead--black cutout man, black cutout woman. The man had his legs apart, the woman had hers together. Pretty much the story of the human race in sign language.

Home is where you dance with others, and dancing is life.

You know," King said, "I'm not much good at telling stories. That sounds like a paradox, but it's not; it's the reason I write them down.

Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered . . . or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power.

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.

Somebody asked Somerset Maugham about his place in the pantheon of writers, and he said, "I'm in the very front row of the second rate." I'm sort of haunted by that.