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

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

A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I've just gotten in the habit of forgiving.

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.

I recognize that on paper, you can't really tell that I'm a fan or a nerd.

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.

I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '