We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.

I always hated those fantasy books where, at the end, all the kids had to go home. At the end of a Narnia book, you always got shown the door. Same with The Wizard Of Oz and The Phantom Tollbooth. You get kicked out of your magic land. It's like, "By the way, here's your next surprise: You get to go home!" And the kids are all like, "Yay, we get to go home!" I never bought that. Did anybody buy that?

About as close you can get to the perfect cerebral thriller: searingly smart, ridiculously funny, and fast as hell... I defy anybody to read the first page and not keep going to the last.

If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.

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

Though the funny thing about never being asked for anything is that after a while you start to feel like maybe you don’t have anything worth giving.

She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone.