Lev Grossman Quotes

Has it crossed your mind that you don’t have to go off on a holy crusade every time things don’t go your way?

What is that thing?" Quentin said.
"This?" Betsy held up the knife, studying its edge. "This is why I'm here. This is what I've always wanted. This is a weapon for killing gods."
"Why would you want to do that?"
"Have you ever met a fucking god?"
"I guess I can see your point.

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.

I'm making a serious point."
"Yes, and I am mocking your serious point to show how ludicrous it is.

Never risking anything meant never having or doing or being anything either. Life is risk, it turned out.

If there was any magic in this world that was not magic, it was wine.

It was always easier to screw up somebody else’s spell than it was to cast one yourself. That was one of the many small unfairnesses of magic.

When he graduated he’d thought life was going to be like a novel, starring him on his own personal hero’s journey, and that the world would provide him with an endless series of evils to triumph over and life lessons to learn. It took him a while to figure out that wasn’t how it worked.

The war we are losing is with time.

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.

There was nothing—in Eliot’s admittedly limited experience—more tedious than virtue.

But that was the thing about the old days: they were old. This was his life now. He was content, and if not happy then happier than he ever thought he’d be again. He had work to do….The past was what it was, his home was here, and anything else was a fantasy.

As he got deeper into it he began to run into a lot of mathematics, which he had to work out with a pencil and paper—you couldn’t do magical equations with computers, they just spat out inconsistent answers before hanging completely. Magical math had to be thought through with a brain.

But you couldn’t mourn forever. Or you could, but as it turned out there were better things to do.

There was a lot to do. Death was an existential catastrophe, a rip in the soft upholstery with which humanity padded over a hard uncaring universe, but it turned out there were an amazing number of people whose job it was to deal with it for you, and all they asked in return were huge quantities of time and money.