A big silvery janitor. Penny, this can’t be how the universe works.” “In the Order we call it ‘inverse profundity.’ We’ve observed it in any number of cases. The deeper you go into the cosmic mysteries, the less interesting everything gets.

Until now, I've been a kind of binge-writer - I'll carve out five or six hours on a weekend day and make a large container of espresso and just bang out a lot of words.

My ultimate goal is to drive people back to the books, when I think of an adaptation.

Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.

It didn’t matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home.

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.

His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.