At about the age of ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound.

All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

We need books...because we are all, in the private kingdoms of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend.

Misery loves another idiot with a jukebox where his soul should be.

Nothing on Earth is so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night.

At the end of night, before you close your eyes, be content with what you've done and be proud of who you are.

I have a hard time defending the production of candy, given that it is basically crack for children and makes them dependent in unwholesome ways.

The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.

The single biggest reason I got my stories taken in various literary magazines - and I want to stress this - is because I refused to give up. Period.

If you want to fight a cult, you've got to form a cult.

To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work.

I can see that an insufficent, or perhaps even defective, socialization process has led you to believe that four-letter words add power to languauge

My architecture tends to be legible, light and flexible. You can read it. You look at a building, and you can see how it is constructed. I put the structure outside.

I really hate those Internet freaks who take each thirty minute bundle of joy and turn it into a cult game of Where's Wally.

A tragedy's first act is crowded with supporting players: witnesses crimping their faces, policemen scribbling in pads and making radio calls, EMS guys unfolding equipment, tubes and wheels.

Once we are truly for ourselves, it becomes possible to care far more profoundly about other people.

I was good at football and cricket at school. My dad said, 'Son, be an architect,' and I came to Melbourne passionate about becoming an architect.

Holiness is not a luxury for the few; it is not just for some people. It is meant for you and for me and for all of us. It is a simple duty, because if we learn to love, we learn to be holy.

First I wanted to be a veterinarian. And then I realized you had to give them shots to put them to sleep, so I decided I'd just buy a bunch of animals and have them in my house instead.

I think the best thing I learned from drawing comics is that it's a great exercise in concision.

The rank is but the guinea's stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that.