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.

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

It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost.

Read everything. If you haven't read everything, you'll never be able to write anything.

A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.

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

I feel that's one of the central questions of fantasy. What did we lose when we entered the 20th and 21st century, and how can we mourn what we lost, and what can we replace it with? We're still asking those questions in an urgent way.