I write about rats because they scare the hell out of me. I think we tend to write out our phobias.

Don't ask me silly questions I won't play silly games I'm just a simple choo choo train And I'll always be the same. I only want to race along Beneath the bright blue sky And be a happy choo choo train Until the day I die.

You could not turn off love- even the rather absent, sometimes taken for granted love- the way you'd turn off a faucet. Love ran from the heart and the heart had it's own imperatives

I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.

Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.

... suicide gets in the air sometimes. Like a cold germ.

Most books about writing are filled with bullshit. Fiction writers, present company included, don’t understand very much about what they do—not why it works when it’s good, not why it doesn’t when it’s bad.