Being a writer can be isolating. It's good to be among readers and booksellers.

You don’t learn about yourself by being alone, you learn about yourself from other people.

If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.

You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.

He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.

The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.

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

That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.

It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost.

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.

Don't take anyone's writing advice too seriously.

Love, at its best, wipes commonsenseAway. Much as drops will condenseFrom hidden liquid in the air, So, too, do lovers soon compareTheir temp’ratures til, happily, Their judgement fogs up suddenly.

Guilt loves the passive.

The amount of trust and bandwidth that you build up working with someone for five, seven, 10 years? It's just awesome. I care about openness and connectedness in a global sense.

According to Inuit culture in Greenland, a person possesses six or seven souls. The souls take the form of tiny people scattered throughout the body.

I always wanted to move to New York because of the Velvet Underground, because of the picture that they painted of New York City.

A long long time ago, I can still remember how that music use to make me smile.

It's just as unpleasant to get more than you bargain for as to get less.

I have to introduce the part of me that feels like a winner to the part of me convinced I’m a loser, and see if they can’t agree to exist somewhere closer to the middle.

Try to avoid complaints. Self-pity even when legitimate never fails to undermine your strength.

For the obvious reasons, furthering my children's education and keeping my family healthy and thriving is my highest mission.