The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.

Take care-there is no force more powerful than that of an unbridled imagination.

Novelist time is reptile time; novelists tend to be ruminant and brooding, nursers of ancient grievances, second-guessers, Tuesday afternoon quarterbacks, retrospectators, endlessly, like slumping hitters, studying the film of their old whiffs.

If children are not permitted-not taught-to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world...?

No; he could be ruined again and again by hope, but he would never be capable of belief.

But the first lie in the series is the one you make with the greatest trepidation and the heaviest heart.

I do have a collection of mid-century, small-press science fiction and fantasy hardcovers that is my most focused and dedicated collection. Everything else I tend more to acquire or amass than collect. I have vinyl records I listen to all the time when I work. But I don’t collect records. I just buy records where the price seems right and it’s music I actually listen to.