I guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy books.

Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings.

I think every fantasy reader secretly believes they know how magic works.

When the oldest Chatwin, melancholy Martin, opens the cabinet of the grandfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt’s house and slip through into Fillory...it’s like he’s opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never ac tually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into something better.

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

For just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.

I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.