“I just hope I don't become so blissful I become boring. I think I'll always be neurotic enough to do something weird.”

“My books are mine, and yet they are alien to me--as a child belongs to a parent and yet has a life of its own. I can guide and hope and nudge my characters this and that way, but in the end, they become what they become. I don't always like what they become myself, but like a parent, there are times when I just don't know what to do about it. Other times when I'm so proud of them I could bust.”

“Well, I guess I'll become a thief, then," said Pica unhappily. "though I don't think I'll be much good. I'm a pacifist, you see?”

“I don't believe art is meant to be economical. Art is adventurous, sloppy and hugely imaginative. What I look at is hitting the jackpot. I don't even think about the intermediate levels of getting paid. What I want to create is something that revolutionizes ideas and it just so happens that I'm not good at it enough yet to become the next William Blake, but I'm trying. I'm not interested in trying - and it might sound weird to hear a guy say this - to become popular for a certain marketplace. I'd rather create something that has its own light and people have to pick it up because they feel it's going to wake them up or inspire them to move forward.”

“I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work,' because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do.”

“I put up with this church, in the hope that one day it will become better, just as it is constrained to put up with me in the hope that I will become better.”