Lev Grossman

"It was a bookstore, and he felt at home in bookstores, and he hadn’t had that feeling much lately. He was going to enjoy it. He pushed his way back through the racks of greeting cards and cat calendars, back to where the actual books were, his glasses steaming up and his coat dripping on the thin carpet. It didn’t matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home."

"Life was briskly and efficiently stripping Quentin of his last delusions about himself, one by one, shucking them off in firm hard jerks like wet clothes, leaving him naked and shivering."

"Maybe when you give up your dreams, you find out that there’s more to life than dreaming. He was going to live in the real world from now on, and he was going to learn to appreciate its rough, mundane solidity."

"There was a lot to do. Death was an existential catastrophe, a rip in the soft upholstery with which humanity padded over a hard uncaring universe, but it turned out there were an amazing number of people whose job it was to deal with it for you, and all they asked in return were huge quantities of time and money."

"But you couldn’t mourn forever. Or you could, but as it turned out there were better things to do."

"As he got deeper into it he began to run into a lot of mathematics, which he had to work out with a pencil and paper—you couldn’t do magical equations with computers, they just spat out inconsistent answers before hanging completely. Magical math had to be thought through with a brain."

"But that was the thing about the old days: they were old. This was his life now. He was content, and if not happy then happier than he ever thought he’d be again. He had work to do….The past was what it was, his home was here, and anything else was a fantasy."

"There was nothing—in Eliot’s admittedly limited experience—more tedious than virtue."

"His heart went out to that weird, solitary man in his uncomfortable hut. He’d never met him. They wouldn’t have had much to say to each other if they had. But whoever that hermit was, he obviously despised his fellow man, and that meant he was OK in Eliot’s book."

"The war we are losing is with time."

"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."

"It was always easier to screw up somebody else’s spell than it was to cast one yourself. That was one of the many small unfairnesses of magic."

"If there was any magic in this world that was not magic, it was wine."

"Never risking anything meant never having or doing or being anything either. Life is risk, it turned out."

"“I’m making a serious point.” “Yes, and I am mocking your serious point to show how ludicrous it is.”"

"“Any idea where we’re going?” “We discussed this. That’s not how quests work. We’re not going to think about it, we’re just going to journey.” “I can’t not think about it.” “Well, don’t overthink it.” “I can’t help it!” Janet said. “Whatever, you can do the not-thinking for both of us.”"

"“What is that thing?” Quentin said. “This?” Betsy held up the knife, studying its edge. “This is why I’m here. This is what I’ve always wanted. This is a weapon for killing gods.” “Why would you want to do that?” “Have you ever met a fucking god?” “I guess I can see your point.”"

"Has it crossed your mind that you don’t have to go off on a holy crusade every time things don’t go your way?"

"“Wishes are for children,” Jane Chatwin said. “I grew up.”"

"Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should."

"“Maybe he was lying,” Peters said. “Lie is a blow to the tyranny of fact,” Hollis said…. “I think lies are good,” he said. “People should lie more. Lies are like these little peepholes into a better world.”"

"“If there’s a bright side to the galaxy,” Peter said, more or less aimlessly, “we’re on the planet that’s farthest from it.”"

"“A Man, a Plan, a Bacchanal: Anomie,” said Peters, grandly."

"“I was just getting comfortable,” she said. “Gimme another sec.” “You can have all the sex you want.”"

"I just thought of this—it’s the American university system. This is my new theory: the New Feudalism. You go to college and you get used to living like some kind of medieval overlord, with people waiting on you and everything, and it warps your mind. It happens to everybody. By the time you graduate you have all the personal habits of an aristocrat, and none of the money. No wonder you’re dysfunctional—you’re a twentieth-century office temp who’s channeling a nobleman in the British Raj."

"Sometimes I think you have an overly vivid imagination, Hollis. With some things it’s just not worth thinking about them too carefully before they happen. They almost never turn out to be as horrible as you think they will."

"Who would’ve thought doing nothing all the time would turn out to be so damn tiring?"

"But walking along Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, in his black overcoat and his gray interview suit, Quentin knew 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. He couldn’t think what else to do."

"All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy. This couldn’t be it. It had been diverted somewhere else, to somebody else, and he’d been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead."

"…it’s like he’s opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never actually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into somewhere better."

"But now that the ripened fruit of all that preparation was right in front of him he suddenly lost any desire for it. He wasn’t surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you’ve done all the work to get something you don’t even want it anymore. He had it all the time. It was one of the few things he could depend on."

"“Well,” she announced cheerfully, “he’s dead!”"

"Quentin wished she weren’t so attractive. Unpretty women were so much easier to deal with in someways—you didn’t have to face the pain of their probable unattainability."

"“The Dean will probably be down to get you in another minute,” Eliot said. “Here’s my advice. Sit there…and try to look like you belong here. And if you tell him you saw me smoking, I will banish you to the lowest circle of hell. Which I’ve never been there, but if even half of what I hear is true it’s almost as bad as Brooklyn.”"

"He’d spent too long being disappointed by the world—he’d spent so many years pining for something like this, some proof that the real world wasn’t the only world, and coping with the overwhelming evidence that it in fact was."

"Quinton didn’t know exactly how to put everything that was ridiculous about that idea in a single sentence."

"He was experimenting cautiously with the idea of being happy, dipping and uncertain toe into those intoxicatingly carbonated waters. It wasn’t something he had much practice at."

"Quentin had never met anybody so staggeringly and unapologetically affected."

"“Are you smart?” There was no non-embarrassing answer to this. “I guess.” “Don’t worry about it, everybody here is. If they even brought you in for the Exam you were the smartest person in your school, teachers included. Everyone here was the cleverest little monkey in his or her particular tree. Except now we’re all in one tree together. It can be a shock. Not enough coconuts to go round. You’ll be dealing with your equals for the first time in your life, and your betters. You won’t like it.”"

"His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he’d gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between."

"Once magic was real everything else just seemed so unreal."

"A gang of wild turkeys patrolled the edge of the forest, upright and alert, looking oddly saurian and menacing, like a lost squadron of velociraptors."

"Most people are blind to magic. They move through a blank and empty world. They’re bored with their lives, and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re eaten alive by longing, and they’re dead before they die."

"“You’re an interesting case,” she said. There is really no end to life’s little humiliations, Quentin reflected."

"His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling."

"Just then, for an instant, the film of reality slipped off the spokes of its projector. Everything went completely askew and then righted itself again as if nothing had happened."

"It was so easy to ignore people when you understood how little power they really had over you."

"“Age,” Quentin heard him mutter. “It’s wasted on the young. Just like youth.”"