C-C-Can you get bones in your buh-buh-brain?' Bill asked. This was turning into the most interesting conversation he'd had in weeks.

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.

The book is not the important part. The book is the delivery system. The important part is the story and the talent.

And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.

People think that I must be a very strange person. This is not correct. I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.

The writer must have a good imagination to begin with, but the imagination has to be muscular, which means it must be exercised in a disciplined way, day in and day out, by writing, failing, succeeding and revising.

THE THREE is really wonderful. A mix of Michael Crichton and Shirley Jackson, hard to put down and vastly entertaining.