When I look back at my career as an author, I don't look at the first book that was ever published as to where my career began - I look to the first book that I ever wrote.

My mother was a very talented artist. When she was in jail, we'd write letters back and forth; that was pretty much the only form of communication we had.

You never know when your ideas are going to come back to you.

When I was a kid... if I couldn't get a ride to the comic book store, I would walk a mile and a half each way to get the latest issues of 'Batman' and 'Spider-Man' and 'X-Men.' I could not choose one over the other.

I see creative-writing classes as some sort of AA meeting. It is more of a support group for people who write than an actual course in which you learn writing skills. This support group is extremely important because there is something very lonely about writing.

I could, of course, have written about the film world and the jealousy there and the frequent belief that others don't have talent. But, for some reason, it just struck me to write about art.

Our fears are an amazing gift of the imagination... a way of glimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how that future will play out.

My mom is a painter and an artist. She would play music, and she always had very good taste in music, fashion, and art. She was also a young single mom, so I think she had really good style; she was really free... just really inspiring in her own way and allowed me to find the direction I wanted to take in my life.