I used to write in a local coffee shop, but there was another guy, another writer, who kept sitting in my favorite seat. I would show up, and he would be there, and I would get exiled to a couch or something, and it would throw me off my game.

It's wonderful to play around with fantasy, because there are an amazing number of as-yet-unbroken rules out there.

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.

Wasn't there a spell for making yourself happy? Somebody must have invented one. How could he have missed it? Why didn't they teach it? Was it in the library, a flying book fluttering just out of reach, beating its wings against some high window?

The line between outside and inside is fuzzier in fantasy. Maybe that's something people are looking for.

The problem with growing up is that once you're grown up, the people who aren't grown up aren't fun anymore.

My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.