Erin Morgenstern

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.

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 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.

I think that's a hallmark of a really good story that it has readers that it speaks to more than others.

The fact that people are already reading and loving something I wrote is still hard to believe.

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

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.

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 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 keep waiting for things to get back down to whelming, but they stay at overwhelming.

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.

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

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

Sometimes I write what I can't paint, and I paint what I can't write. I use a different part of the brain.

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

I don't always write in order, so composing multi-book stories could get complicated.

If I had a story idea that I felt would work best in three volumes I might write a trilogy eventually. I'd very likely write it all at once, though, so I could work on it as a whole and not broken into individual volumes.

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.

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.

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.

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 don't have as tight a time limit anymore but I still write in long marathon sessions and then I won't write for a while, I'm not a write-every-day writer.

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.

Tarot is just stories on cards.

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.