My job is not to try to give readers what they want but to try to make readers want what I give.

I have danced with the spider. I have cut a caper with the dancing mad god.

I do, however, feel reasonably strongly the sense that the job of a piece of argumentative scholarly non-fiction is not the same as the job of a piece of fiction.

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.

Scars are memory. Like sutures. They stitch the past to me.

Any moment called NOW is always full of possibles.

Fantasy and science fiction can be literal as well as allegorical and there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a monster like a giant squid for what it is, as well as searching for metaphor.

I'll never be a minimalist. The fact that the prose is more tightly controlled doesn't for a minute mean that it's minimalist. I very much like arcane words and baroque sentence structure.

A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.

My sustenance is information. My interventions are hidden. I increase as I learn. I compute, so I am.

Every book I write, the first thing I have to do is get into the voice, and the voice varies from book to book - that's part of what's interesting to me.

Stand strong in your worth and don't let anyone talk you out of it.

Look at me, making one of your dreams come true. You and your Norm truck driving around Normville.""You're practically a god.

By means of hearing one understands dharma, malignity vanishes, knowledge is acquired, and liberation from material bondage is gained.

The greatest gift we can give another is the gift of a good example.

Do not let adversity break you. Think of it as a learning experience that will make you stronger.

I really don't know where the independent fits in anymore when twenty-five million dollar movies are considered straight-to-video fare. We're like penny postage stamps.

All history involves selection, and it is always human beings who do the selecting.

There's a danger in loving somebody too much, and it's sad when you know it's your heart you can't trust.

And what a plan! This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever occurred.