“To my mind, the most important thing in any form of fiction is the human element, but only if it takes us beyond the everyday, into situations that examine the complexities that may fascinate or puzzle us. To dwell on the mundane as some kind of a writing exeercise is useless.”

“The greatest riddle of all.... the riddle of man! The complex mystery of the universal human being as he stands wihtin the threshold of universal laws. This is the most fascinating puzzle!”

“The most recent past seems to be the most uncertain, and it is handed down to us only in the form of rumors. It would take a historian of everyday life to unearth what happened yesterday.”

“Enchantment frightens us for good reason. Whether it's enchantment of the ordinary kind or the magical kind, it may very well change us, and we may not be able to return to our old selves, to our old certainties and our easy understandings. Magical people seem to fear that less than the rest of us. They want to be enchanted and are quite willing to be changed forever as they go deeper and deeper into realms beyond everyday understanding. Most of us wouldn't mind a little more magic ourselves, if we could slip in and out of it. We too want to leave the brab realities of work-a-day life, experience the transcendent, to revel in endless possibility. But most of us have lost any belief in good magic. All that's left is a vague sence that evil is afoot and ready to draw nearer. The only magic most of us believe in is the scary stuff.”

“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs. ”

“Poor humanity! I often feel that the tableland of sanity upon which most of us dwell, is small in area, with unfenced precipices on every side, over any one of which we may fall.”