Quotes from Lev Grossman

Sometimes I think I am fate's sword. She wields me cruelly.

The whole scene had a dreamlike quality, like a Chagall painting come to life.

There are catacombs underneath the library," Penny said. "That's another special collection: it's all the novels people meant to write but didn't.

Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever." "You can't just decide to be happy." "No, you can't. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is

We found some of them. It was always either a fight

You just had to get some idea of what matters and what doesn't, and how much, and try not to be scared of the stuff that doesn't. Put it in perspective. Something like that.

His heart felt like it was burning with relief and regret, the emotions melting and running together and turning into bright, hot, white light. "The thing is," he said. "I'd hate to cut out right before bonus season.

He was sarcastic and spookily smart and, on some level, basically a kind person who just needed a ton of therapy and maybe some mood-altering drugs. Something to selectively inhibit the voracious reuptake of serotonin that was obviously going on inside his skull 24-7.

You know what Arthur C. Clarke said about technology and magic, right? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

What have people ever done for me? People don't want my help. People called me a faggot and threw me in a Dumpster at recess when I was in fifth grade because my pants were pressed." "Well,

We shall now seek that which we shall not find. —Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur

It's called Littlewood's law.

It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't everything either.

For a punk Penny could be an unbelievable drag.

By the time he was thirteen it was all over. Edward's gift evaporated like dew in the harsh dawn of puberty, painlessly and almost overnight, and though afterwards he could clearly remember what it was like to wander through those gleaming mental corridors, the doors to that secret edifice were now firmly closed, the silver key lost, the path overgrown, never to be found again. His ranking plummeted, and his matches became a series of tearful early concessions.

Highlight: In a way fighting like this was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.

that's what it was. Deliberately embarrassing. That's what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a child's game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didn't matter. Death didn't respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it.

Dauntless was a talking horse. She just didn't talk much.

Being brave was easy when you would rather die than give up. Fatigue meant nothing when you actually wanted to suffer.

Maybe it's that the world is an imperfect place, but if you spend all your time looking for something better you'll only end up somewhere even worse.

We should to do it," he said. "Today of all days." "We're accepting congratulations for doing nothing." "We're reassuring the people of continuity in the face of tragedy.

Earth or Fillory, did it even matter? What was the huge conundrum? Everywhere you looked there was so much richness, you could never exhaust it. Maybe it was all a game, that got crumpled up and thrown away at the end, but while you were here it was real.

Jesus you're hurting my man-boobs.

But at the same time I could feel the ordeal remaking me. You know? Like the desert itself was smelting me, melting away weaknesses and impurities and extracting what was hard and true.