Lev Grossman Quotes

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.

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.

Quentin had never met anybody so staggeringly and unapologetically affected.

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.

She wore a simple flowing white gown. So did everybody else. Gummidgy also wore a crown of mistletoe.
So your basic Golden Bough deal, Julia thought. Fucking mistletoe. She never saw what all the fuss was about. Sure, it’s pretty enough, but at the end of the day it’s still a botanical parasite that strangles its host.

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.

Any idea where we're going?"
"We discussed this. That's not how quests work. We're not going to think about it, we're just going to journey."
"I can't not think about it."
"Well, don't overthink it."
"I can't help it!" Janet said. "Whatever, you can do the not-thinking for both of us.

His heart went out to that weird, solitary man in his uncomfortable hut. He’d never met him. They wouldn’t have had much to say to each other if they had. But whoever that hermit was, he obviously despised his fellow man, and that meant he was OK in Eliot’s book.

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

I have a hard time believing that the history of the universe is being written by a talking rabbit," Eliot said. "Though that would explain a lot.

Who would’ve thought doing nothing all the time would turn out to be so damn tiring?

Quinton didn’t know exactly how to put everything that was ridiculous about that idea in a single sentence.

You know what women are like? They’re like those long, skinny blocks you get in Tetris, the ones made out of four blocks straight in a row. First when you need them you can’t get any, then when you don’t need them anymore they’re fucking everywhere and you don’t know what to do with them.

He threw his sword away. Screw swords. A magician doesn’t need a sword. A magician doesn’t need anything but what’s inside him.

If he couldn’t go back, he would just have to do things differently going forward. He felt how infinitely safer and more sound this attitude was. The trick was just not wanting anything. That was power. That was courage: the courage not to love anyone or hope for anything.
The funny thing about it was how easy everything got, when nothing mattered.