Comic books were telling me what life was about. This was how I kind of entered life, through fiction.

All great popular literature today one day will be seen as great literature and will no longer be seen as popular literature.

When you deal with a person who's experiencing dementia, you can see where they're struggling with knowledge. You can see what they forget completely, what they forget but they know what they once knew. You can tell how they're trying to remember.

The biggest misconception that people have about the literary life is the romance of it. That a writer has this large world available to him or her of people, of ideas, of experiences, of interchange of ideas...

My job is writing for people to enjoy and then writing about a broader and a deeper world.

My hero in comic books is Jack Kirby: 'Spider-Man,' 'Fantastic Four,' 'Captain America,' Marvel Comics. He was really the basis for Marvel Comics.

Your book grows. The early part of your book is growing still while you are writing the later part of your book.