I think that's important: to know 'the other,' as a means of coming to understanding.

Sometimes, when I'm sitting at my desk for long hours and nothing's coming to me, I remember my fifth-grade teacher, the way her eyes lit up when she said, 'This is really good.'

In the midst of observing the world and coming to consciousness, I was becoming a writer, and what I wanted to put on the page were the stories of people who looked like me.

People want to know and understand each other across lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability.

I'm in a little bit of a different situation, because working in the business that I do and living in the city that I live in, I haven't had a problem with people who are gay. Since I was 10 I've been working alongside them, and some of my best friends are gay.

As a genre, the best horror poses central human questions - Who can you trust? What is the cost of our secrets? What is our relationship to history? What are we blind to? What evils are lurking under the smooth surface of the self? - through radical dislocations.

I tell people my only successful long-term relationship was with Jim Packard. He was my rock. I didn't realize how codependent I was.

I have relationships with people I'm working with, based on our combined interest. It doesn't make the relationship any less sincere, but it does give it a focus that may not last beyond the experience.