She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the world, slide it aside for a little bit, and let… - Lev Grossman

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

This was a double game: he was trying to save his childhood, to preserve it and trap it in amber, but to do that he was calling on things that partook of the world beyond childhood, whose touch would leave him even less innocent than he already was. What would that make him? Neither a child nor an adult, neither innocent nor wise. Perhaps that is what a monster is.

Even Quentin knew that using magic to alter one’s physical appearance never ended well. In the world of magical theory it was a dead spot: something about the inextricable, recursive connection between your face and who you were—your soul, for lack of a better word—made it hellishly difficult and fatally unpredictable.