I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I think will subsequently be recognized as one of the first great novels of the 21st century.

You don’t learn about yourself by being alone, you learn about yourself from other people.

Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.

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

I'm not one of your knockabout, knuckle-scarred, Internet-controversy-courting book critics. Occasionally I stumble into controversy accidentally, but not because I enjoy it. It's probably just because I'm a weird person.

There is really no end to life's little humiliations.

You're saying the gods don't have free will." "The power to make mistakes," Penny said. "Only we have that. Mortals