" This is the wizard’s occupational disease: envy. Deadly, grinding envy, which looks at my power and my person and argues that the one does not deserve the other. I have heard it, seen it, felt it, ever since the moment at which I first learned I was a wizard at all. I reveled in it at the Hall of Chimeras, flaunted my looks and my tastes and my cruelty. But I was powerless for over a year, powerless and helpless and frightened, and somewhere along the way I lost my appetite for this particular poisonous feast. "

― Sarah Monette , The Virtu (Doctrine of Labyrinths, #2)