Lev Grossman

"“And I think I’ve figured out how. I think I finally know how to fix everything.” “Historically speaking,” Alice said, “when people have said that they’ve almost always been wrong.”"

"This was a double game: he was trying to save his childhood, to preserve it and trap it in amber, but to do that he was calling on things that partook of the world beyond childhood, whose touch would leave him even less innocent than he already was. What would that make him? Neither a child nor an adult, neither innocent nor wise. Perhaps that is what a monster is."

"“How’s it going?” “Pretty well,” Quentin said. “I’m not dead.”"

"“Maybe Fillory doesn’t need a god right now. I think this age might just be a godless one.” A Fillory without a god. It was a radical notion. But he thought about it, and it didn’t seem like a terrible one. They would be on their own this time—the kings, the queens, the people, the animals, the spirits, the monsters. They’d have to decide what was right and just and fair for themselves. There would still be magic and wonders and all the rest of it, but they would figure out what to do with them with nobody looking over their shoulders, no divine parent-figure meddling with them and helping or not according to his or her divine mood."

"Heads turned. This was gossip of the very first water—pure pharmaceutical-grade gossip."

"She wondered if later on she would wish she hadn’t looked. That was one thing about books: once you read them they couldn’t be unread."

"Now all I can see is how simple he made everything sound. Reading the Fillory books you would think that all one has to do is behave honorably and bravely and all will be well. What a lesson to teach young children. What a way to prepare them for the rest of their lives."

"It was funny about magic, how messy and imperfect it was. When people said something worked like magic they meant that it cost nothing and did exactly what you wanted it to. But there were lots of things magic couldn’t do. It couldn’t raise the dead. It couldn’t make you happy. He couldn’t make you good-looking. And even with the things it could do, it didn’t always do them right. And it always, always cost something."

"Who the fuck is playing that shit? Janet thought. How do they even know what notes to play? Probably it was Written somewhere, probably there’s always been a big alpenhorn somewhere under glass, with a sign that says In case of Ragnarok break glass and play an E flat."

"He’d always half expected that the watch would turn out to have some sort of amazing magical power—turning back time, maybe, or slowing it, or freezing it, or something. It certainly looked magical enough. But if it had any powers at all he’d never found them. Funny how some things you’re sure will pay off never do."

"You want to know what it’s like to be a demon? Imagine knowing, always and forever, that you are right, and that everyone and everything else is wrong."

"But not even the end of the world was going to stop Janet from being a bitch. It was the principle of the thing."

"We each of us on our own found ways to get on without Fillory. The real world was not as fantastical and brightly colored as Fillory, but it was very distracting nonetheless, and if it didn’t contain any pegasi or giants it was absolutely teaming with girls who seemed almost as magical and dangerous. Fillory was sweet, but this world was very savory. It was easy to let Fillory go when every football match and scholarship examination and furtive kiss told you to stop fighting, forget it, let it be, leave it behind."

"She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the world, slide it aside for a little bit, and let her please, please just be somewhere and somebody else."

"Even on the first day we invaded Plover’s house we sensed the conundrum that Americans are faced with in England: they’re too frightened of English people to behave rudely to them, and too ignorant to know how to behave politely."

"One of the secrets Martin must have learned down below the Northern Marsh was how not to care about some things, and there was power in that, the power to live as though his actions had no consequences. It fell to us to witness the consequences, and they were ugly."

"Quentin thought about how wrong things had gone. Things so often went wrong. Was it him? Was he making the same mistake over and over again? Or different mistakes? He like to think he was at least making different mistakes."

"That was magic for you, right? The thing about magic, the real kind: it didn’t make excuses, and it was never funny."

"Janet stopped at the very end of the pier and looked around, hands on hips. Everything looked normal. Not a lot of apocalypse going on here. But then swamps already looked like the end of the world anyway. Maximum entropy, land and water commingled chaotically. There wasn’t much further downhill they could go."

"Hate isn’t like love, it doesn’t end. It goes on forever. You can never get to the bottom of it. And it’s so pure, so unconditional!"

"She was starting to suspect that facing up to the nightmare of the past is what gives you the power to build your future."

"I admit that you might possibly not be deluding yourself about that."

"It was ending too soon, the way everything did, everything except Ebola viruses and really bad people like psychopaths. Those things never ended. How was that fair? Fuck it, it was stupid. Theories about life were always bullshit."

"It was the sound of death, the ultimate irreversible."

"But of course You can get so much done when everyone thinks You’re dead. No interruptions. No one prays to a dead God, why would they?"

"Guy lives in a fantasy world without junk food or cars or trans fats or TV and he’s still fat. You had to admire his dedication to the cause."

"“What do you think magic is for?” “I dunno. Don’t answer a question with a question.” “I used to think about this a lot,” Quentin said. “I mean, it’s not obvious like it is in books. It’s trickier. In books there’s always somebody standing by ready to say hey, the world’s in danger, evil’s on the rise, but if you’re really quick and take this ring and put it in that volcano over there everything will be fine. “But in real life that guy never turns up. He’s never there. He’s busy handing out advice in the next universe over. In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone’s just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you’ve figured it out and done it, you’ll never know whether you were right or wrong. You’ll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn’t. There’s no answers in the back of the book."

"Up through around twenty-five he’d never even thought about his back: it was a balanced, frictionless, self-regulating system. Now it felt like a busted gearbox into which somebody had chucked a handful of sand."

"When I look at England now I see a dead place, Rupert. A wasteland. I won’t live in a wasteland. I’d rather die in paradise."

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

"He had no interest in TV anymore—it looked like an electronic puppet show to him, an artificial version of an imitation world that meant nothing to him anyway."

"“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.”"

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"“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.”"

"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."

"“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 that what you want?”"

"“Well, but why would You create something that had the power to hurt You? Or any of Your creatures? Why don’t You help us? Do You have any idea how much we hurt? How much we suffer?” A stern glance. “I know all things, daughter.” “Well, okay, then know this.” Janet put her hands on her hips. She had struck an unexpected vein of bitterness in herself, and it was running away with her. “We human beings are unhappy all the time. We hate ourselves and we hate each other and sometimes we wish You of Whoever had never created us or this shit-ass world or any other shit-ass world. Do You realize that? So next time You might think about not doing such a half-assed job.”"

"“It’s a funny thing about the old gods,” he said. “You think that just because they’re old they must be difficult to kill. But when the fighting starts, they go down just like anybody else. They aren’t stronger, they’re just older.”"

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

"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."