Night is brushed aside like so much cobweb. The day is wound up and begins even before the last haunted dreams, the last of the fog, those spectral and evanescent residues, have faded away.

Night-time is being brushed aside like so much cobweb. The day is wound up and begins even before the last haunted dreams, the last of the fog, those spectral and evanescent residues, have faded away.

At night the fog was thick and full of light, and sometimes voices.

[In]the too solid three-dimensional city, I could never feel myself as anything but spectral, disintegrating, pointless, fluid.

I'm not a writer because I want to make money. I'm a writer because I'm a very slow thinker, but I do care about thinking, and the only way I know how to think with any kind of finesse is by telling stories.

I had really tried to do everything else but [revisit Oz]. Partly because I knew there would be some amongst us who would say, 'Oh, he's just trying to milk that cow.' . . . . But in the end, I had an idea I couldn't get rid of. I couldn't get it out of my room.