I recognize that on paper, you can't really tell that I'm a fan or a nerd.

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

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

It was strange to be naked in front of anybody. It was like that cold water out there in the bay: scary, you didn’t think you could stand it, but then you plunged in and pretty soon you got used to it. There was enough hiding in life. Sometimes you just wanted to show somebody your tits.

I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.

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.

There is really no end to life's little humiliations.