“And every place and time an author writes about is imaginary, from Oz to Raymond Chandler's L.A. to Dickens's London.”

“To do something for someone or something you loved- England or Shakespeare or a dog or the Hodbins or history- wasn't a sacrifice at all. Even if it cost you your freedom, your life, your youth.”

“One of the nastier trends in library management in recent years is the notion that libraries should be 'responsive to their patrons'.”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”