I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '

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

Being brave was easy when you would rather die than give up.

It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.

In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't.

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.

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.