Quotes from Lev Grossman

Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first.

Honk!" he yelled. "Honk honk honk honk honk honk honk!" His classmates agreed.

But the thing about monsters was, you couldn't talk to them about it, because they wouldn't admit they were monsters in the first place.

But it is easier to destroy than to create, and there are those whose nature it is to love destruction.

Sure, but real life's not actually like that," Quentin went on, fumbling after what he was sure was an important insight. "You don't just go on fun adventures for good causes and have happy endings. You're not going to be a character in a story, there's nobody arranging everything for you. The real world just doesn't work like that.

When he graduated he'd thought life was going to be like a novel, starring him on his own personal hero's journey, and that the world would provide him with an endless series of evils to triumph over and life lessons to learn. It took him a while to figure out that wasn't how it worked.

Sure, you can live out your dreams, but it'll only turn you into a monster.

You cannot study magic. You cannot learn it. You must ingest it. Digest it. You must merge with it. And it with you.

Becoming me was the greatest creative project of my life.

I have a hard time believing that the history of the universe is being written by a talking rabbit," Eliot said. "Though that would explain a lot.

It was strange to be naked in front of anybody. It was like that cold water out there in the bay: scary, you didn't think you could stand it, but then you plunged in and pretty soon you got used to it. There was enough hiding in life. Sometimes you just wanted to show somebody your tits.

Facing up to the nightmare of the past is what gives you the power to build your future.

You can spend your life waiting and watching for perfect moments, but sometimes you have to make one happen.

Quentin's conversations with his parents were so circular and self-defeating, they sounded like experimental theater.

The idea of some kind of objectively constant, universal literary value is seductive. It feels real. It feels like a stone cold fact that In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, is better than A Shore Thing, by Snooki. And it may be; Snooki definitely has more one-star reviews on Amazon. But if literary value is real, no one seems to be able to locate it or define it very well. We're increasingly adrift in a grey void of aesthetic relativism.

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.

When the oldest Chatwin, melancholy Martin, opens the cabinet of the grandfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt's house and slip through into Fillory...it's like he's opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never ac tually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into something better.

I just completed a long car trip on a Sunday in August with two small children, which believe me is enough to convince you that Samuel Beckett was right about everything.

Well, he wouldn't get fooled again. He wouldn't give anybody the chance. Quentin felt a new attitude of detachment descend on him. His molten anger and grief were cooling into a glossy protective coating, a hard transparent lacquer of uncaring. He felt how infinitely safer and more sound this attitude was. The trick was just not wanting anything. That was power. That was courage: the courage not to love anyone or hope for anything.

This isn't how it ends!" Quentin said. "I am the hero of this goddamned story, Ember! Remember? And the hero gets the reward!" "No, Quentin," the ram said. "The hero pays the price.

No one gets punished for anything. We do whatever we want, and that's all we do, and nobody stops us, and nobody cares.

He wished he could tell him that none of it was going to turn out anything like the way he hoped, but that everything was going to be all right anyway. It was hard to explain, but he would see.

There was enough hiding in life. Sometimes you just wanted to show somebody your tits.

5 1/2 centuries after its 1.0 release, the book is a surprisingly robust piece of information technology. Sure, its memory is relatively tiny--one novel adds up to less than a megabyte. But it doesn't need charging, and it never crashes. Its interface is rapidly and intuitively navigable. The scroll never stood a chance.