You know what Arthur C. Clarke said about technology and magic, right? Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Turn it … - Lev Grossman

“You went down the slide?”
Benedict nodded.
Quentin was evolving a theory about that. The slide was humiliating, that’s what it was. Deliberately embarrassing. That’s what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a child’s game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didn’t matter. Death didn’t respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it.

Maybe when you give up your dreams, you find out that there’s more to life than dreaming. He was going to live in the real world from now on, and he was going to learn to appreciate its rough, mundane solidity.

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.