 The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals. |
| I got into underground comics fairly early on and kind of wandered away from the superhero stuff, but I was an art student and I was drawing a lot as a kid. |
| Nerds are just deep, and neurotic, fans. Needy fans. We're all nerds, on one subject or another. |
| I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way. |
| It was only as I wrote about it that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then. |
| The past is still visible. The buildings haven't changed, the layout of the streets hasn't changed. So memory is very available to me as I walk around. |
| I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram. |
| I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world. |
| I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts. |
| I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow, I keep myself sane. |
| I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously. |
