When I was 35 I realized that I was still thinking a lot about what it would be like to go to Narnia. To really go - not just in a daydream, or in a children's book, but what it would actually feel like, physically, psychologically, every other way. The idea was haunting me.

Read everything. If you haven't read everything, you'll never be able to write anything.

Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late.

It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.

I have no doubt there are magician psychopaths, and magician serial killers. I doubt Brakebills admissions is very good at screening for those.

Fanfiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don't do it for money. That's not what it's about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They're fans, but they're not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.

It's an engrossing look at the way the flow of information shapes history-as well as a rare glimpse into the soul of the hardcore geek