40 Quotes by David Liss

I don't generally listen to music while working, but sometimes music can help me get past minor writer's block.

I am saying that while popular culture usually portrays practitioners of magic as separate from ordinary people, often biologically different, many people have habits or customs or superstitions that show magic was once a whole lot more democratic.

I went with the old adage that you should write what you know. What I knew was 18th century Britain, so what I decided I would do is write a novel based on my dissertation research.

We live in this era that has benefited from the Industrial Revolution, and we live with a kind of luxury and plenty that even all but the poorest of Americans live with a kind of sensuousness that was unimagined by medieval kings. But in order to get to this point, a lot of people had to suffer in really terrible ways.

The world is full of wonders that cannot be measured. That is why they are wonders.

I was always a big Justice League fan. I always loved Batman, Superman - I have a weird Martian Manhunter fixation.

I do, in fact, have a book club. I meet with a couple of guys once a month of a lunchtime discussion of some interesting text, usually, but not always, philosophical.

I didnt want to write a book that suggested that magic good/technology bad.

In my research, what I found most interesting was how common and ordinary magic was to people in the past.