W. Bruce Cameron

I don't think my father considered allowing a teenager to follow his dreams was necessarily good parenting, or even parenting. I think he thought I was a teenager with teenage impulses. I'm pretty sure he knew that if he just let me follow those impulses, it would wind up being very expensive and perhaps even life-endangering.

Communicating with teenage girls is easy unless you're an adult, and then it's like having someone take a pair of pliers and, one-by-one, yank off your fingernails through your ears.

My philosophy on snow skiing is that there are less expensive ways to fall down a mountain. Yet every couple of years, I go on a ski trip for the same reason that women will have multiple children - they simply forget how much it hurts.

I've tried several diets over the past couple of years - not because I need to lose weight, but because my pants are trying to cut me in two.

My younger sister looks to me to provide her with advice on how to do her job better - though she's too shy to ask me questions, so I have to give her my opinion on an unsolicited basis.

I think, of all the holidays we celebrate, my least favorite is Earth Day. For one thing, I never know what sort of gift is appropriate. A jar of dirt, maybe? And it's not clear to me why Earth even needs a 'day,' since a spin on its axis creates a day. That's like giving a man who owns a shoe store a gift of a pair of shoes.

My main characters are the most sunny, happy, optimistic, loving creatures on the face of the Earth. I couldn't be happier that's where I start. I can put as many flawed people in the dog's world as I like, but the dog doesn't care. Dog doesn't judge. Dog doesn't dislike. Dog loves. That's not so bad.

My mother taught me to drive using the 'Detroit Method,' where speed limits and traffic lights are taken as cute suggestions.

None of the kids in the neighborhood had dogs. My dad walked in that Labrador, and we started running together and rolling around together like we found each other after years apart. And then, suddenly, some of the other people in the neighborhood started getting dogs, too.

For me, the most indispensable tool for wrapping presents is a wife.

I've always been busy, but I wasn't always successful.

Without a dog, I would have tassels on my throw pillows instead of little stubs of yarn that look like small worms. The pillows seem to function just fine without the tassels, so perhaps it isn't a problem.