I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.

Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders.

I feel that's one of the central questions of fantasy. What did we lose when we entered the 20th and 21st century, and how can we mourn what we lost, and what can we replace it with? We're still asking those questions in an urgent way.

The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.

A big silvery janitor. Penny, this can’t be how the universe works.” “In the Order we call it ‘inverse profundity.’ We’ve observed it in any number of cases. The deeper you go into the cosmic mysteries, the less interesting everything gets.

Becoming an author changes your attitude too. Once you see where books come from, and how they're made, they never seem quite as sacred again.

The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.