May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness.

I imagine the world dividing into the people who want to feed their children, and the ones shooting at them.

Real life doesn't have to be convincing, but fiction does.

HERE ARE YOUR INSTRUCTIONS, CROWLEY. And suddenly he knew. He hated that. They could just as easily have told him, they didn't suddenly have to drop chilly knowledge straight into his brain.

London grew into something huge and contradictory. It was a good place, and a fine city, but there is a price to be paid for all good places, and a price that all good places have to pay.

It's not irrelevant, those moments of connection, those places where fiction saves your life. It's the most important thing there is.

Books smell and feel better. They have that wonderful thingness of turning the pages.