“If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. 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.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is is because you're special?
Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.
Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“In a way fighting was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“Are you kidding? That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost. ”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it? ”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“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.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. ”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“The problem with growing up is that once you're grown up, the people who aren't grown up aren't fun anymore.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“The life I should be living had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“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.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“There is really no end to life's little humiliations.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“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?”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“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.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“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.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“Being brave was easy when you would rather die than give up.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“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? Do you want to be the asshole who went to Fillory and was miserable there? Even in Fillory? Because that's who you are right now."
There was something true about what Alice was saying. But he couldn't grasp it. It was too complex, or too simple. Too something...It was strange: he's thought that doing magic was the hardest thing he would ever do, but the rest of it was so much harder. It turned out that magic was the easy part.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“It was so much easier to be angry. Being angry made him feel strong, even though-- and this contradiction did nothing to diminish his anger-- he was angry only because his position was so weak.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“Wasn't there a spell for making yourself happy? Somebody must have invented one. How could he have missed it? Why didn't they teach it? Was it in the library, a flying book fluttering just out of reach, beating its wings against some high window?”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“Look, who's the talking bear here?” Quentin snapped. “Is it you? Are you the talking fucking bear? All right. So shut the fuck up.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“Now he had answers, but they weren't doing what answers were supposed to do: they weren't making things simpler or easier. They weren't helping.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
“The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magicians
Lev Grossman
Born place: in Lexington, MA, The United States
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“I'll see you soon," he whispered, the lump in his throat rising again to jar the release of his sigh. He swallowed once more and said, "But it won't be soon enough.”
― Laury Falter, quote from Reckoning
“Reality [...] at every level from photons to philosophical fancies to the consciousness of living organisms was fluid [...]. To break apart and confine this reality into separate categories created by the mind was foolish and futile, much like trying to capture a ray of light inside a dark wooden box. This urge to categorize was the true fall of man [...] the infinite became finite, good opposed evil, thoughts hardened into beliefs, one's joys and discoveries became dreadful certainties, man became alienated from what he perceived as other ways and other things, and, ultimately, divided against himself, body and soul. [...] Always seeking meaning, always making their lives safe and comfortable, human beings do not truly live.”
― David Zindell, quote from The Broken God
“Milwaukee, Rebecca. Order and sobriety and a devotion to cleanliness that scours out the soul. Decent people doing their best to live decent lives, three's nothing really to hate them for, they do their jobs and maintain their property and love their children (most of the time); they take family vacations and visit relatives and decorate their houses for the holidays, collect some things and save up for other things; they're good people (most of them, most of the time), but if you were me, if you were young Pete Harris, you felt the modesty of it eroding you, depopulating you, all those little satisfactions and no big, dangerous ones; no heroism, no genius, no terrible yearning for anything you can't at least in theory actually have. If you were young lank-haired, pustule-plagued Pete Harris you felt like you were always about to expire from the safety of your life, its obdurate sensibleness, that Protestant love of the unexceptional; the eternal certainty of the faithful that flamboyance and the macabre are not just threatening but - worse - uninteresting.”
― Michael Cunningham, quote from By Nightfall
“We kissed for two hours. Eventually, I led him into my bedroom and pulled off both of our shirts. He stopped me.
"This might sound weird; it's not typical guy response." I froze, suddenly awkward. "I mean, if I didn't feel the way I do with you I would be all for it, but I kind of think maybe it would be good to wait. I've rushed into sex, and had it be a mistake." He shrugged apologetically. "I mean, if it's safe to assume you are experiencing the same date that I am, then I think we will have time."
I was a little flabbergasted and more than a little embarrassed. How could I explain that the idea sounded like a huge relief to me, that I didn't quite understand where the impulse to start taking my clothes off came from? I had had the same experience. I rarely enjoyed first-time sex with partners, largely because I usually did it before I really knew or trusted them. Here was where the difference between what I knew and did remained wide. The shame I felt wash over me was tinged with that hatred of my own innocence. Was I still so green? So unconfident? Had I gone straight out of the extremity of sex work to the innocence of my adolescence? Where was my self-knowledge? Still, I was relieved.
"Of course. I agree totally." I clutched my T-shirt to my chest and smiled at him. "And yes, I am on the same date you are on."
"I thought so," he said. "I mean, I don't think you can feel like this when it's not reciprocal."
He left at 2:00 A.M. and called me at 11:00 the next morning to schedule our second date.”
― Melissa Febos, quote from Whip Smart: A Memoir
“Put a man in a cage with beasts and throw away the key, and it’s usually not very long before the man is a beast himself.”
― quote from Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
Stitching Snow
The World Peace Diet
The Story of Awkward
In The Blood
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