When I write, I try to think back to what I was afraid of or what was scary to me, and try to put those feelings into books.

Read. Read. Read. Just don't read one type of book. Read different books by various authors so that you develop different styles.

Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.

Many adults feel that every children's book has to teach them something.... My theory is a children's book... can be just for fun.

Sometimes it helps to scold yourself, to give yourself advice.

I feel happy to terrify kids.

The only lesson is, you gotta keep at it.

Everything that has happened to me has been amazing and surprising.

Who is more irrational, the guy who believes in a God he can't see, or a guy who's offended by a God he doesn't believe in?

I've had a very sheltered life. What can happen to you if you stay home writing all day?

If we all die and there is no God, then it's just eternal unconsciousness, you'll never know, but if you're wrong... you'll know forever.

I do believe—that all the world's a star. Beyond that heav'nly light I shall fly far!" Luke (ACT I, Scene 7)

There are those, I know, who will say that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is the American dream.

He had electric blue hair that had stuck around his head like tendrils of a startled octopus.

... justice is mercy's highest self.

If reason is a universal faculty, the decision of the common mind is the nearest criterion of truth.

I don't want it to be attributed to a loss of control on my part. When I throw you out of the window, I want there to be no doubt the act was deliberate.

You can't write well what you don't read for pleasure. If it doesn't entertain you, it's not going to entertain anyone else.

My definition of beauty is something between extremely ugly and extremely fantastic.

If you are attempting the impossible, you will fail.

I would also think that the replay showed it to be worse than it actually was.