Erin Morgenstern quotes:

It's said that All Hallows' Eve is one of the nights when the veil between the worlds is thin - and whether you believe in such things or not, those roaming spirits probably believe in you, or at least acknowledge your existence, considering that it used to be their own. Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright.

I love that very traditional fairy tale where it's not all 'happily ever after.' I like all that old school, bloody, 'Brothers Grimm' sort of stuff. So you have all those shades of gray in there.

When you meet someone new who instantly gets you, your sense of humor and your attitudes and your worldview, even if theirs are different - and you get them in return. You both talk and talk and agree and laugh and nod and yes, yes, of course you should get another round of drinks.

I like to call it nighttime brain: the way your mind seems to function on a different frequency than it does during daylight hours - which can be good or bad but also can lead to unexpected epiphanies or experiences that wouldn't be the same at any other time of day.

I feel 'The Night Circus' has a complete story arc in one book. I like it as a single volume. It feels complete to me, and I wouldn't want to stretch it out into something it's not.

Marco knows he does not have the time to push her away, so he pulls her close, burying his face in her hair, his bowler hat torn from his head by the wind...."Trust me," Celia whispers in his ear, and he stops fighting it, forgetting everything but her.

I'm a firm believer that lighting affects mood, and twinkly lights on strings bring something magical to occasions ranging from concerts to weddings, though I'm fond of using them as year-round home decor. There's a reason why they're sometimes called fairy lights. When the night is right, there aren't any strings at all.

I have absurdly vivid dreams.

When I was growing up, if there was a Young Adult section of my town's library, I missed it. I wandered right from 'The Babysitter's Club' over to Stephen King. His books were big and fat and they seemed important. I eventually worked my way through most of the shelf, but 'It' is the one that stuck with me.

It is perhaps both a blessing and a curse that fictional worlds spring into my mind nearly fully formed and it takes quite a while to sift through everything to find the story.

Celia." he says without looking up at her, "why do we wind our watch?" "Because everything requires energy," she recites obediently, eyes still focused on her hand. "We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.

I binge write. I think it's because I started seriously writing by participating in National Novel Writing Month, an online-based challenge to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

I'm working on something that's not yet novel-shaped but is something of a film-noir-flavored 'Alice in Wonderland.' It will also very likely be a single volume story and not the start of a series.

The circus looks abandoned and empty. But you think perhaps you can smell caramel wafting through the evening breeze, beneath the crisp scent of the autumn leaves. A subtle sweetness at the edges of the cold.

I'm an emotional sort of person in general and I have a vivid imagination, so I feel the whole spectrum of emotion strongly when I write.

I thought a circus environment would be an interesting venue to explore, where you didn't just have one tent with three rings and a show going on but where you could explore different things in different tents.

I liked the idea of having actual magic performed as stage magic, so you could assume that it was just a trick, that something is all smoke and mirrors, but there's that, like, feeling at the back of your mind: What if it's not?

I saw in details while she saw in scope. Not seeing the scope is why I am here and she is not. I took each element spearately and never looked to see that they never did fit together properly

I don't have any particular rituals, I sometimes like to write in longhand when I'm searching for ideas but I do the vast majority by typing, I can't always keep up with my thoughts longhand. I'm not a coffee shop writer because I feel obliged to order more coffee and then I end up over-caffeinated.

You believe you could not live with the pain. Such pain is not lived with. It is only endured. I am sorry.

Esse quam videri," Celia says. "To be, rather than to seem.

Celia laughs and a curl of her hair falls across her cheek. Marco tentatively moves to brush it off her face, but before his fingers reach her, she pushes herself off the ledge, her silver gown a billowing cloud as she falls onto the pile of jewel-toned cushions.

I think I get some of my love of adult books that can be fun from Douglas Adams.

I'm a firm believer that lighting affects mood, and twinkly lights on strings bring something magical to occasions ranging from concerts to weddings, though I'm fond of using them as year-round home decor.

They say it's darkest before the dawn, but it also tend to be quietest, and the quiet lets you hear yourself better.

The silence that falls between them is a comfortable one. He longs to reach over and touch her, but he resists, fearful of destroying the delicate camaraderie they are building. He steals glances instead, watching the way the light falls over her skin. Several times he catches her regarding him in a similar manner, and the moments when she holds his eyes with hers are sublime.

I am a fan of magic and fantasy, particularly when it's grounded in reality.

It's helpful for me to get ideas - the physical action of painting. Sometimes it frees up your writer brain. It's nice for me now that the writing has become a serious career that painting can become more like a hobby.

What happened? Bailey asks.That is somewhat difficult to explain, Tsukiko answers. It is a long and complicated story.And you're not going to tell me, are you?She tilts her head a bit No, I am not, she says.Great, Bailey mutters under his breathThe bonfire exploded? How?Remember when I said it was difficult to explain? That has not changed.

Tsukiko sits on the floor in the center of the room, wearing a red kimono. A beating crimson heart in the pale chamber.

He spends the majority of the evening in the company of Celia Bowen, whose elaborate gown changes color, shifting through a rainbow of hues to compliment whoever she is closest to.

Which tent is your favourite?" he asks. "The Ice Garden," Celia answers, without even pausing to consider. "Why is that?" Marco asks. "Because of the way it feels," she says. "It's like walking into a dream. As though it is someplace else entirely and not simply another tent...

Do you remember all of your audiences?" Marco asks. "Not all of them," Celia says. "But I remember the people who look at me the way you do." "What way might that be?" "As though they cannot decide if they are afraid of me or they want to kiss me." " I am not afraid of you," Marco says.

Kelly Link is inimitable. Her stories are like nothing else, dark yet sparkling with her unique brand of fairy dust. This is the most marvelous kind of trouble to get in.

Love is fickle and fleeting," Tsukiko continues. "It is rarely a solid foundation for decisions to be made upon, in any game.

The finest of pleasures are always the unexpected ones.

The sensation reminds him of the first snow of winter, for those first few hours when everything is blanketed in white, soft and quiet.

Before you leave, the fortune teller reminds you that the future is never set in stone.

You don't have to be a chef or even a particularly good cook to experience proper kitchen alchemy: the moment when ingredients combine to form something more delectable than the sum of their parts.

Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.

I have tried to let you go and I cannot. I cannot stop thinking of you. I cannot stop dreaming about you.

I have been surrounded by love letters you two have built each other for years, encased in tents.

Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case.

Misdirection is one of my strengths,

He reads histories and mythologies and fairy tales, wondering why it seems that only girls are ever swept away from their mundane lives on farms by knights or princes or wolves. It strikes him as unfair to not have the same fanciful opportunity himself. And he is not in the position to do any rescuing of his own.

This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it.

Only the ship is made of books, its sails thousands of overlapping pages, and the sea it floats upon is dark black ink.

I would have written you, myself, if I could put down in words everything I want to say to you. A sea of ink would not be enough.' 'But you built me dreams instead.

Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.

Is it not that bad to be trapped somewhere, then? Depending on where you're trapped?" "I suppose it depends on how much you like the place you're trapped in," Widget says. "And how much you like whoever you're stuck there with," Poppet adds, kicking his black boot with her white one.

It is destroying me that I cannot ask you to dance.

Trapped in silence, Marco traces apologies and adorations across Celia's body with his tongue. Mutely expressing all the things he cannot speak aloud.He finds other ways to tell her, his fingers leaving faint trails of ink in their wake. He savors every sound he elicits from her.The entire room trembles as they come together.And though there are a great many fragile objects contained within it, nothing breaks.

I mean only that I hope they find darkness or paradise without fear of it, if they can.

You will be fine,' the fortune teller says. 'There may be decisions to make and surprises in store. Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.

The Burgess sisters arrived together. Tara and Lainie do a little bit of everything. Sometimes dancers, sometimes actresses. Once they were librarians, but that is a subject they will only discuss if heavily intoxicated.

It is a matter of perspective, the difference between opponent and partner," Tsukiko says. "You step to the side and the same person can be either or both or something else entirely. It is difficult to know which face is true.

It's not a real name," she says. "Not one that he's carried with him always. It's one he wears like his hat. So he can take it off if he wants.

She has gathered that the man in the grey suit whom her father called Alexander also has a student, and there will be some sort of game. "Like chess?" she asks once. "No," her father says. "Not like chess.

That's the beauty of it. Have you seen the contraptions these magicians build to accomplish the most mundane feats? They are a bunch of fish covered in feathers trying to convince the public they can fly, I am simply a bird in their midst.

Secrets have power, and that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them.

I paint very messy. I throw paint around. So when I let myself do the same sort of thing with my writing, and I would just write and write and write and revise, that's when I found my rhythm in writing.

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.

Tarot is just stories on cards.

I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held.

I am tired of trying to hold things together that cannot be held. Trying to control what cannot be controlled. I am tired of denying myself what I want for fear of breaking things I cannot fix. They will break no matter what we do.

I have read for countless people on innumerable subjects and the most difficult thing to understand within the cards is always the timing. I knew that, and still it surprised me. How long I was willing to wait for something that was only a possibility. I always thought it was just a matter of time but I was wrong.

I have you here, all around me. I sit in the Ice Garden to get a hint of this, this way that you make me feel. I felt it even before I knew who you were, and every time I think it could not possibly get any stronger, it does.

You don't have to be a chef or even a particularly good cook to experience proper kitchen alchemy: the moment when ingredients combine to form something more delectable than the sum of their parts. Fancy ingredients or recipes not required; simple, made-up things are usually even better.

I'm actually not a huge circus fan in the traditional sense, but I like a lot of the circus trappings of striped tents and caramel. I lean more towards Cirque du Soleil than Barnum and Bailey.

Comic-Con was crazy, good crazy... Five minutes after I'm done, the cast of 'Twilight' is where I was sitting.

I like that 'once upon a time' quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based.

And now, I'm a best selling author, a different sort of fairy tale that I still sometimes wonder when I'll wake up from.

Plot is not my forte. It's like I have to live in my head in the book for a while before I figure out what the story is... My process is a bit messier.

Writing in a near frenzy is wonderful and freeing, but for me, it did not result in a nice, shiny novel. Instead, what I have is a mess.

Writing in a near-frenzy is wonderful and freeing but, for me, it does not result in a nice shiny novel. Instead what I have is a mess.

I go back and forth between input phases where I'm reading a lot or trying to get out and explore the world a bit and soak up inspirations and then I'll get back into output mode and write and write and write.

It's a wonderful sort of feeling when people want to spend more time in a world you created.

People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.

Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours.

I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I am, however, rather annoyed that my Tara has left me to suffer you lot alone. I do not see as well without her. I do not hear as well without her. I do not feel as well without her. I would be better off without a hand or a leg than without my sister. Then at least she would be here to mock my appearance and claim to be the pretty one for a change. We have all lost our Tara, but I have lost a part of myself as well.

It is likely to make us think we are not caged. We cannot feel the bars unless we push against them.

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.

And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister's story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead.

Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.

Grow up, Bailey." "That is precisely what I'm doing," Bailey says. "I don't care if you don't understand that. Staying here won't make me happy. It will make you happy because you're insipid and boring, and an insipid, boring life is enough for you. It's not enough for me. It will never be enough for me. So I'm leaving. Do me a favor and marry someone who will take decent care of the sheep.

I couldn't tell the difference between what was real and what I wanted to be real.

Follow your dreams Bailey. Be they Harvard or somehing else entirely. No matter what that father of yours says, or how loudly he might say it. He forgets that he was someone's dream once, himself

I think looking forward will be better than looking back.

I don't have the time to devote to circles or covens. I have to fit things in when and where I can, in stolen moments and cups of coffee. Stirring clockwise to conjure. Widdershins to banish. There's never enough time, and rarely enough caffeine, but I make do with what I have. Besides, cauldrons and pointy hats are overrated. Sometimes I see other customers practicing. Pouring their cream and sugar with studied intent. Stirring with purpose. I add an extra spoonful of sugar to my own coffee for them, to make all of our enchantments sweeter.

...the thrill of being surrounded by something wondrous and fantastical, only magnified and focused directly at her. The feel of his skin against hers reverberates across her entire body, though his fingers remain entwined in hers.

And then he tells her stories. Myths he learned from his instructor. Fantasies he created himself, inspired by bits and pieces of others read in archaic books with crackling spines.

I made a wish on this tree years ago," Marco says. "What did you wish for?" Bailey asks. Marco leans forward and whispers in Bailey's ear. "I wished for her.

If she were gone I would be nothing. You should think better of yourself than to settle for that.

I am haunted by the ghost of my father, I think that should allow me to quote Hamlet as much as I please.

I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will. When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn't it? p.369

The boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies out sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that become intimately familiar beneath his ink-stained fingers, formed again and again in increasingly steady lines.

I cannot let a place that is so important to so many people fade away. Something that is wonder and comfort and mystery all together that they have nowhere else. If you had that, wouldn't you want to keep it?

He turns and walks away, moving so quickly that the candle flames shiver with the motion of the air. "I miss you,"sobel says as he leaves, but the sentiment is crushed by the clatter of the beaded curtain falling closed behind him.

And there are really never endings, happy or otherwise.

The Cloud Maze. " An Excursion in Dimension A Climb Though the Firmament; There Is No Beginning There Is No End Enter Where You Please Leave When You Wish Have No Fear of Falling

The rain increases and umbrellas sprout like mushrooms amongst the graves.

The funeral is a quiet one, despite the number of mourners present. There are no sobs or flailing handkerchiefs. There is a smattering of color amongst the sea of traditional black. Even the light rain cannot push it down into the realms of despair. It rests instead in a space of thoughtful melancholy.

All empires fall eventually. It is the way of things.

You need to understand your limitations so you can overcome them.

Though I have seen a great deal of the sights, traveled a number of the available paths, there are always corners that remain unexplored, doors that remain unopened.

Even the air feels different on Halloween, autumn-crisp and bright

At the center, where a cuckoo bird would live in a more traditional timepiece, is the juggler. Dressed in harlequin style with a grey mask, he juggles shiny silver balls that correspond to each hour. As the clock chimes, another ball joins the rest until at midnight he juggles twelve balls in a complex pattern. After midnight the clock begins once more to fold in upon itself. The face lightens and the clouds return. The number of juggled balls decreases until the juggler himself vanishes. By noon it is a clock again, and no longer a dream.

Wine is bottled poetry, he thinks.

And before he can tell her to tell Widget goodbye for him if need be, she leans forward and kisses him, not on the cheek, as she has a handful of times before, but on the lips, and Bailey knows in that moment that he will follow her anywhere.

I don;t think there's anything wrong with being a dreamer. There is not. But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.

If I have not been completely honest with you, it is only because I know a great deal of things that you do not want to know. I am going to ask that you trust me when I tell you I am trying to make things better. It is an extremely delicate balance and there are a great many factors involved. The best we can do right now is take everything as it comes, and not to worry ourselves over things that have happened, or things that are to come.

I have had affairs that lasted decades and others that lasted for hours. I have loved princesses and peasants. And I suppose they loved me, each in their way.

That man has no shadow.

She turns her head, Bailey catches her eye, and she smiles at him. Not in the way that one smiles at a random member of the audience when one is in the middle of performing circus tricks with unusually talented kittens but in the way that one smiles when one recognizes someone they have not seen in some time.

To be rather than to seem.

You prefer not to see the gears of the clock, as to better tell time.