I'm not a stereotypical professor type. I don't smoke a pipe and wear a tweedy jacket. I'm more like a student who stayed at the university for so long that they gave him a job to keep him out of trouble.

It's easier to write about heartbreak after you've had your heart broken. You have more material to draw from, you can extrapolate from your own experiences and make reasonable assumptions about how your characters would feel and act.

Fear tends to come from ignorance. Once I knew what the problem was, it was just a problem, nothing to fear.

My only real daydreamy casting over the years has been Natalie Portman for Denna. She's an amazing actress, and Denna is going to be one of the hardest characters to pull off.

To deem us simply enemies is to lose the true flavor of our relationship. It was more like the two of us entered into a business partnership in order to more efficiently pursue our mutual interest of hating each other.

There are two sure ways to lose a friend, one is to borrow, the other to lend.

We have more brilliant fantasy novels than brilliant fantasy movies. Movies and TV are done by committee. But with a novel, it's really just one person running the show. That allows for a clarity and unity of vision that's pretty unique, artistically.