I'm now much more excited about genre distinctions. What I still see breaking down are more the hierarchical arrangements of genres. That is, "There is literary fiction, and then there are lesser genres." I'm much more clear on the idea that literary fiction is itself a genre. It is not above other genres. It is down there in the muck with all the other genres, and it's doing the wonderful things that it does, but to give it a Y-axis, to make it high and low, just seems absurd. I stand by that.

Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.

I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I think will subsequently be recognized as one of the first great novels of the 21st century.

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.

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

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

The life I should be living had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.