I was a terrible science student, and for a long time, I thought I just didn't understand science. It turned out that I didn't understand post-Newtonian science. I could actually understand how people thought scientifically about the world in the past.

I teach 18- to 21-year-olds - the 'Harry Potter' generation. They grew up as voracious readers, reading books in this exploding genre. But at some point, I would love for them to give Umberto Eco or A.S. Byatt a try. I hope 'A Discovery of Witches' will serve as a kind of stepping-stone.

I couldn't resist hiding some historical details and a few clues relevant to the plot and characters of 'A Discovery of Witches' throughout the pages of the novel.

I found a 'lost' manuscript called the Book of Soyga that had once belonged to Queen Elizabeth I's court astrologer, John Dee, in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Everybody thought it was the missing key to Dee's interest in magic. Of course, it wasn't really lost. It was there, in the catalog.

Science is about nothing but getting at the truth, and anything that gets in the way of that diminishes, in my experience, the science.

When it comes to the fearless life, the divine gives nothing freely... save to those who freely give themselves to discovering the truth about their own fearless selves.

You weren't born just to live a life and to die; you were born to accomplish something specifically. Matter of fact, success is making it to the end of your purpose; that is success... Success is not just existing. Success is making it to the end of why you were born.

Every experience feeds an actor, and I've learned that depression is all around us.