Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late.

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.

Maybe there's a sense that technology isn't necessarily the answer to a lot of our problems. Fantasy offers readers a less radically alienated world - a world where desires and feelings that normally are trapped inside your mind are made real in the form of magic.

It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.

I have spent many, many hours reading J.K. Rowling's work. I am a known 'Harry Potter' fan.

I don't know if I've ever derived such an immediate sense of calm and well-being from any book as I did from 'Right Ho, Jeeves.' It was like I was Pac-Man and the book was a power-up.

The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.