“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.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Though the funny thing about never being asked for anything is that after a while you start to feel like maybe you don’t have anything worth giving.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“She still had her bad days, no question, when the black dog of depression sniffed her out and settled its crushing weight on her chest and breathed its pungent dog breath in her face. On those days she called in sick to the IT shop where, most days, she untangled tangled networks for a song. On those days she pulled down the shades and ran dark for twelve or twenty-four or seventy-two hours, however long it took for the black dog to go on home to its dark master.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“You’re all so obsessed with other worlds, you’re so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you’ve never bothered to figure out what’s going on here!”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders…”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“A big silvery janitor. Penny, this can’t be how the universe works.”
“In the Order we call it ‘inverse profundity.’ We’ve observed it in any number of cases. The deeper you go into the cosmic mysteries, the less interesting everything gets.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Being a hero, the man had observed, is largely a matter of knowing one’s cues.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Julia would do anything to make the time pass. She killed time, murdered it, massacred it and hid the bodies. She threw her days in bunches onto the bonfire with both hands and watched them go up in fragrant smoke. It wasn’t easy. Sometimes it felt like the hours had ground to a halt. They fought her as they passed, one after the other, like stubborn stools.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Sometimes you just have to do things, Quentin,” Julia said, as he climbed on board after her. “You spend too much of your time waiting.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“You’re saying the gods don’t have free will.”
“The power to make mistakes,” Penny said. “Only we have that. Mortals.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“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.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“She had never expected anything special to just happen to her. Her plan for life was to get out there and make special things happen, which was a much more sensible plan from a probability point of view.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“Sometimes he wasn’t sure if he was in love with Julia or just that he wanted to be in love with her, because it would be so comforting, such a relief, to be in love with her. It seemed like such a good idea. Was there really that big of a difference?”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“She knew she was obsessed, but it was turning out that she was the kind of person who needed to be obsessed with something, and she could have done a lot worse.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“It's true," Eliot said. "Statistically, historically, and however else you want to look at it, you are almost never right. A monkey making life decisions based on its horoscope in USA Today would be right more often than you. But in this case, yes, you were right. Don't spoil it.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“In one huge leather-gloved fist Jollyby held up a large, madly kicking hare by its ears.
'Son of a bitch,' Dauntless said. 'He caught it.'
Dauntless was a talking horse. She just didn't talk much.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“What makes you think what happened to you on Earth wasn't an adventure?”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“A key part of successfully being Julia, it seemed, was not giving a shit if you looked weird.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
“There was enough hiding in life. Sometimes you just wanted to show somebody your tits.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
Lev Grossman
Born place: in Lexington, MA, The United States
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“Sam, I know you’re upset over what happened with you and Drake,” Astrid began.
“Upset?” Sam echoed the word with an ironic smirk.
“But that’s no excuse for you keeping secrets from us.”
“Yeah,” Howard said, “Don’t you know only Astrid is allowed to keep secrets?”
“Shut up, Howard,” Astrid snapped.
“Yeah, we get to lie because we’re the smart ones,” Howard said. “Not like all those idiots out there.”
Astrid turned her attention back to Sam. “This is not okay, Sam. The council has the responsibility. Not you alone.”
Sam looked like he could not care less about what she was saying. He looked almost beyond reach, indifferent to what was going on around him.
“Hey,” Astrid said. “We’re talking to you.”
That did it. His jaw clenched. His head snapped up. His eyes blazed. “Don’t push me. That wasn’t you with your skin whipped off and covered in blood. That was me. That was me who went down into that mine shaft to try to fight the gaiaphage.”
Astrid blinked. “No one is minimizing what you’ve done, Sam. You’re a hero. But at the same time—”
Sam was on his feet. “At the same time? At the same time you were here in town. Edilio had a bullet in his chest. Dekka was torn to pieces. I was trying not to scream from the…You and Albert and Howard, you weren’t there, were you?”
“I was busy standing up to Zil, trying to save Hunter’s life,” Astrid yelled.
“But it wasn’t you and your big words, was it? It was Orc who stopped Zil. And he was there because I sent him to rescue you. Me!” He stabbed a finger at his own chest, actually making what looked like painful impact. “Me! Me and Brianna and Dekka and Edilio! And poor Duck.”
― Michael Grant, quote from Lies
“Sometimes good came out of hurt, compensation came out of pain. He gave with one hand, and He took with the other.”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River
“Time isn't the same for the mad and the blind.”
― V.E. Schwab, quote from A Darker Shade of Magic
“*Appendix usually means "small outgrowth from large intestine," but in this case it means "additional information accompanying main text." Or are those really the same things? Think carefully before you insult this book.”
― Pseudonymous Bosch, quote from The Name of This Book Is Secret
“It’s the only choices we have. You eliminate everything, and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the answer.”
― Kim Harrison, quote from The Good, the Bad, and the Undead
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