In real life, good people die all the time and a**holes can live long and happy lives. It's a crapshoot.

I think the internet is a great marketing tool--but marketing is not my job. I'm a writer. My job is to write novels.

Like most authors, I'm a raging egomaniac. I know that about myself. And I know that, if I had internet access, I would waste countless hours looking up things about myself, writing fake posts about how great I am and arguing with people who don't like my work. It saves me a lot of time and frustration to just stay out of the loop.

If there's any mystery to me at all, it's probably due to the fact that I'm not online and don't go to conventions--which means that I'm probably not as accessible to fans as most writers are these days. If that makes me seem like a weird recluse, so be it.

Murder is an inherently evil act, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how convincing the rationalizations.

I always thought the appeal for vampires are the same as religion, the desire to avoid death and live forever.

Life is short. Eternity is long.

A light wind blew through here that carried with it scents of sadness and loss, not recognizable odors but smells that corresponded to nothing, chimerical fragrances able to evoke melancholic memories.

Real life was messier than fiction, and in it you didn't always have time to do or say the right things.

Names have power. In certain cultures, just speaking a man's name gives you mastery over him.

I write what I want to write. Period. I don't write novels-for-hire using media tie-in characters, I don't write suspense novels or thrillers. I write horror. And if no one wants to buy my books, I'll just keep writing them until they do sell--and get a job at Taco Bell in the meantime.