Remember to breathe. It is after all, the secret of life.

While I pride myself on trying to be creative in all areas of my life, I have occasionally gone overboard, like the time I decided to bring to a party a salad that I constructed, on a huge rattan platter, to look like a miniature scale model of the Gardens of Babylon.

I write because I admire the act of rationalization, of seeking clarity in one's understanding of the complexities of life, and I'm bad at it. I'm slow. Writing, which is an arduous and slow process, proceeds at the same rate as my sloth-like mind.

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.

Perhaps family itself, like beauty, is temporary, and no discredit need attach to impermanence.