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.

We live in a society now where the sexual taboo for children has really passed by the wayside. Any nineyear-old can go into a 7-11 and check out the Playmate of the Month, but you don't want your kids to know about death. You don't want your kids to know about disfigurement. You don't want 'em to know about creepy things because it might warp their little minds.

It was not fair, it was not fair, it was not fair. So cried his child's heart, and then his child's heart died a little. For that is also the way of the world.

The terror, which would not end for another 28 years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

Understand death? Sure. That was when the monsters got you.

By writing a horror novel where this inexplicable disorder takes over in our ordered lives, you make order look better by comparison. But below that, there's a part of us that responds to the Who bashing their instruments to pieces on the stage. There's a very primitive part that says, "Do it some more."

Want to know the best thing about teaching? Seeing that moment when a kid discovers his or her gift. There's no feeling on earth like it.