Quotes from Lev Grossman

Magic, Quentin discovered, wasn't romantic at all. It was grim and repetitive and deceptive. And he worked his ass off and became very good at it.

He slid down the stone bench to her end and kissed her and bit her lower lip until she gasped.

There are Higher Laws that are past your understanding, daughter. The power to create order is one thing. The power to destroy is another. Always they are in balance. But it is easier to destroy than to create, and there are those whose nature it is to love destruction.

Death. Life. A fish dies. A billion mites eat it and live. In the swamp there is no difference." "There is to the fish," Janet said. "You're a shitty philosopher, so don't try.

It was easy when you were this angry, and this good, and God he was angry. And good.

He wasn't happy. Why not? He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come.

Quentin was perfectly capable of taking care of himself, except when he wasn't.

Time, that dull mechanism that usually reliably stamped out one second after another, like parts on a conveyor belt, erupted into a glorious melody.

The beginning, the laying down of the fundamentals, was always the worst part, which he supposed was why so few people did it. That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.

Note to self: Do not waste entire life being angry about stupid things.

Sometimes she looked so beautiful he couldn't believe she had anything to do with him. He could barely believe she existed at all. "But

They moaned a bit at each other, as one does

At that moment, when he should have been most lucidly present, he had no idea whether he was lying or telling the truth.

Quentin looked at Plum. "After you," she said. "Ladies first." "Age before beauty." "P's before Q's.

It was still possible that five years from now, when they were more or less over their post-traumatic stress disorder, they'd all get a big kick out of getting together and talking about it.

And I need this. That's all I can tell you.

He didn't know if he could explain it to a non-magician. Everything would simply be what it was and nothing else. All there would be was what you could see. What you felt and thought, all the longing and desire in your heart and mind, would count for nothing. With magic you could make those feelings real. They could change the world. Without it they would be stuck inside you forever, figments of your own imagination.

Whatever was coming next would come.

It was like I'd become a ghost without having to go through the messy intermediate step of actually dying.

I'm assuming you have some secret magical way of dealing with the negative health effects of all those cigarettes.' 'It's kind of you to ask. I sacrifice a virgin schoolgirl every other fortnight by the light of a gibbous moon, using a silver scalpel forged by Swiss albinos. Who are also virgins. Clears my little lungs right up.

Life was already sorting them into categories, whether they liked it or not. All they could do was stare at each other dumbly across the widening gaps.

Give 'em Hades.

That got some appreciative laughter, though he wasn't joking, and the bird didn't laugh. It didn't answer him either. Quentin couldn't read its face; like all birds, it had only one expression.

Though I feel like were only just about to get started. We wouldn't star over, we'd just start.