Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.

Once I fell in love with books, I fell in love completely.

There were no horror movies or horror books to speak of in the '40s. I picked the '50s because that pretty well spans my life as an appreciator - as somebody who's been involved with this mass cult of horror, from radio and movies and Saturday matinees and books. In the '40s there really wasn't that much. People don't want to read about horrible things in horrible times. So, in the '40s, there was Val Lutin with The Cat People and The Curse of the Cat People and there wasn't much else.

Books and movies are like apples and oranges. They both are fruit, but taste completely different.

My books depend on someone in danger, putting pieces together and figuring things out. They do a lot of thinking, and that gets lost in the movie.

The books are always there, just the way you wrote them. The plays often don`t turn out the way you wanted them to because in the theater, you`re always involved with collaborators and they don`t always see the work the way you do.

I enjoy going back and forth between plays and novels. It`s like having a wife and a mistress. Books are the wife; plays, the mistress.

You have to go where the book leads you.

I want to engage the reader. I'm an emotional writer, in the sense that I would be happy if you re-read a book for the intellectual or the mental part of it, but, the first time, I just like to reach out and grab you, pull you in.