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I don't remember my father reading to me, but I remember him telling me bedtime stories. I got to pick what was in them, and then he'd make them up.

The thing is that my father's story helps to communicate what was at stake with my mother, and my mother and father had so much a partnership that his story is integral to her story, as her story is to his - really, her story can't be told without his story.

I came from a family where, you know, we sat down at the table every night, and you better have a story to tell. My father never wrote his stories down. And you know, I learned that they went farther if you wrote them down.

My paternal grandfather was a failed novelist. He stacked boxes of rejected manuscripts in a closet.

My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.

I am always drawn to father/son stories.

My dad was such a great story-teller, a good teacher.

I've been writing stories, in one form or another, since I was a kid.

Many great stories are father issues, mother issues or death.

Looking back, I realize my favorite stories weren't in books, they were in comics. On top of being a history enthusiast, my father was also a comics fan, and he kept his stash in the top drawer of his dresser, in easy reach of a kid making a beeline to the bathroom.