He had reached the outer limits of what Fun, capital F, could do for him. The cost was way too high, the returns pitifully inadequate. His mind was d… - Lev Grossman

Even on the first day we invaded Plover’s house we sensed the conundrum that Americans are faced with in England: they’re too frightened of English people to behave rudely to them, and too ignorant to know how to behave politely.

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.

That was magic for you, right? The thing about magic, the real kind: it didn’t make excuses, and it was never funny.