There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell.

I went to college at Harvard, then did three years of graduate school at Yale. At both places I studied comparative literature. People find it odd that I went to both Harvard and Yale, and I guess it is odd, but that's just what people did where I grew up.

His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he'd gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.

By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.

As a writer I'm more drawn to villains who are just slightly mad.

His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.

I've stayed in houses that were in the country, and in England, but I'm still not sure that I've stayed in an English country house.