Home > Work > The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)
141 " and the rest of his life lay in front of him like a barren, meaningless postscript. "
― Lev Grossman , The Magicians (The Magicians, #1)
142 " And on and on, and it all sounded completely, horribly plausible. Any one of a thousand options promised - basically guaranteed - a rich, fulfilling, challenging future for him. So why did Quentin feel like he was looking around frantically for another way out? Why was he still waiting for some grand adventure to come and find him? The professors Quentin talked to about it didn't seem concerned at all. They didn't get what the problem was. What should he do? Why, anything he wanted to! "
143 " In a way fighting like this 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. "
144 " I will take some chances. If you will, for 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.” “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? "
145 " She was passionately loyal, and if she was obnoxious it was only because she was so deeply tender-hearted. It made her easily wounded, and when she was wounded she lashed out. She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone. "
146 " Until then he’d worked hard, but he got in his share of malingering like everybody else. "
147 " If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life. "
148 " wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life. “Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded. “But somewhere in the heat of magic that boundary between word and thing ruptures. It cracks, and the one flows back into the other, and the two melt together and fuse. Language gets tangled up with the world it describes. “I "
149 " It was hard not to envy her. A phantom toll-booth, or a chariot of fire, probably. Drawn by thestrals. "
150 " He was unexpectedly happy, though he instinctively kept it a secret. "
151 " trick was just not wanting anything. That was power. That was courage: the courage not to love anyone or hope for anything. The "
152 " Wait a minute,” Quentin said. “Who or what is the Thames dragon?” “The Thames dragon,” Eliot said. “You know. The dragon who lives in the Thames. "
153 " 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. "
154 " I got my heart’s desire, he thought, and there my troubles began. "
155 " 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. He "
156 " You just had to get some idea of what matters and what doesn’t, and how much, and try not to be scared of the stuff that doesn’t. Put it in perspective. "
157 " I got my heart’s desire, he thought, and there my troubles began. “We "
158 " was so easy to ignore people when you understood how little power they really had over you—he "
159 " he’d fantasized about having nothing to do except lie on his bed and sleep and stare into space, but now those empty hours were here, and they were getting old amazingly fast. "
160 " Happiness was a real, actual, achievable possibility. It came when you called. Or no, it never left you in the first place. They "