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

The main advantage of being a reviewer is that you read a lot. A lot of books get sent to you, and you have an amazing vantage point from which to observe what's going on in contemporary fiction - not only genre stuff, the whole spectrum.

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

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

You don't want to move toward some utopian literary situation where everybody's free of all conventions. That's ridiculous! Conventions are what you need. You have nothing to break down if you don't have conventions.

By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.

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