“I can’t rely upon sex and violence to sell my books”

“This book could scare them. The sex, the violence, the dream sequences and the iconoclasm - I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with that. I understand that. It was very uncomfortable to write some of it”

“You can’t sell it outside if you can’t sell it inside.”

“You can’t know its mind, and you can’t control it. This creature is nothing but war incarnate. If you traffic with it, you bring war into your house, and violence down upon yourself.”

“The same authorities who insist upon beginnings, middles, and ends, declare that Great Literature (by which they mean the stories they have been taught to admire) is about love and death, while mere popular fiction like this is about sex and violence. One reader's sex, alas, is another's love; and one's violence, another's death.”

“The first chapter sells the book; the last chapter sells the next book.”