“Sometimes success demands a certain refined insanity.”

“Sometimes I am afraid for people like you who have to know things. Your kind will dig and hunt and worry at it until one day you will find what is hidden, waiting for you.”

“Cracks especially. You have to be careful of the cracks.. Sometimes they are disguised as something else. A doorway, or a smile or even a winking eye. And if you fall through them, you never know were you will end up.”

“It is interesting that the worst retellings of traditional fairy tales are those that heavy-handedly take the step of making a moral point.”

“Maruman does not loll.”

“Here's the thing. I hate kids. Always have.I mean, I know the job of the race, biologically speaking, is to achieve immortality through reproduction, but the idea of getting impregnated and blowing up like a balloon as I serve as a carrier and service unit for this other person who will eventually burst out of me in the most terrifying way imaginable, then carry on using me one way or another for the rest of my life, is right up there with throwing myself off the top of a twenty-story building. If I have a biological clock, it is digital and does not tick.”

“The short story form allows evocation, suggestion, implication. Its potency often lies in what it does not say.”