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

And then the world exploded.

the year she had run fleetly through the dewy grass under the moon- the night of wine, when dreams condensed out of thin air like the nightmilk of fantasy.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

The simple truth of things is that bad dreams are far better than bad wakings.

Too often, in novels that are speculative, God is a kind of kryptonite, and that's about all that it is, and it goes back to Dracula, where someone dumps a crucifix in Count Dracula's face, and he pulls away and runs back into his house. That's not religion. That's some kind of juju, like a talisman.

I don't want to go to the heaven that I learned about when I was a kid. To me, it seems boring.