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.

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

Nothing is wrong with you. You're not different. Everybody feels as bad as you do: this is just what writing a novel feels like. To write a novel is to come in contact with raw, primal feelings, hopes and longings and psychic wounds, and try to make a big public word-sculpture out of them, and that is a crazy hard thing to do.

I never thought about doing a sequel when I was actually writing 'The Magicians.' I only ever considered it a standalone.

How often have I met and disliked writers whose books I love; and conversely, hated the books and then wound up liking the writer? Too often.

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

More than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.