Michael Gruber quotes:

The Book of Air and Shadows' was born during a conference with an intellectual property lawyer on a particular afternoon in November of 2003.

But there's the paradox of fiction - why do you cry when a fake character dies? It's the basis of art. You engage with people who don't exist and care about them as you would your friends and relatives.

Professors go batty too, perhaps more often than other people, although owing to their profession, their madness is less often remarked.

Farid, you are keeping a hawk; don't expect her to lay eggs like a chicken.

Does it matter, when you read, if the person who wrote still lives?

But it turns out that people who are grounded and secure don't change much under stress. That's what being grounded means.

It's part of what we call the Shadow, all the dark parts of us we can't face. It's the thing that, if we don't deal with it, eventually poisons our lives.

I thought I would write non-fiction. I thought I would enter the New York literary scene as copy editor, work my way up, and then write my own books.

As a matter of fact I had a terribly traumatic childhood. But afterward I sort of reraised myself.

The problem with evil people is that they can see only evil in others. It is one of the worst curses of being evil, that you can no longer experience good.