Writing a novel is not merely going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land: it is hours and years spent in the factories the streets the cathedrals of the imagination.

I always know exactly where my stories take place which gives me something certain so I can use my imagination for the other stuff. I worry though who wants to keep reading stories about Kalamazoo?

The way that a handful of corporations in Los Angeles dictate how our stories are told creates a real poverty of imagination and it's a big problem.

There's just so many great stories in the past that you can know a little bit about but you can't know it all and that's where imagination can work.

I like something where I can really use my imagination and be an active participant in the construction of the monster and usually that's in the world of the supernatural or the world of the fantastic so that's why those kinds of stories about demons and the supernatural appeal to me or maybe I'm really interested in that subject.

'Castle' is a guy living in a fantasy world. He's in his imagination writing these stories of murder.

Ghost stories really scare me. I have such a big imagination that after I watch a horror movie like 'The Grudge' I look in the corners of my room for the next two days.

Some stories are true that never happened.

I think films about men are often about characters who don't want to express their feelings. You're supposed to kind of admire them for not expressing their feelings. And I feel that's a bit dull. Women's stories often have stronger emotional content which I enjoy doing. What I really love doing is mixing that with humor.

It's self-effacing it's hard-luck the shtetl stories. All those Coasters things are an amalgam of Yiddish and black humor.

Suspense is very important. Even though this is humor and they're short stories that theory of building suspense is still there.

My stories are very somber so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides life has so much humor.

I don't want to tell your story because you're a insensitive self-centered moron. I've told a lot of stories about young people and I always feel there's hope.

I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.'

For all their current prestige Osama bin Laden and the suicide bombers are still regarded in all but the most desperate districts of Gaza or Peshawar as romantics with little chance of more than symbolic victories however bloody and brutal. That gives both the Middle East and the West a small and distant hope of security.

I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention to keep them turning the pages to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse yes but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' does that.

As long as we can tell stories about our ability to survive the more we will hope not self-destruct.