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Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman Books

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The Magicians

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“And if she liked and trusted the person who asked, she would add that yes, it was kind of a lot to deal with: her outward affect was bright and capable, and that was no illusion, but equally real was the yawning pit of exhaustion inside her. She just felt so tired sometimes. And because of everything her parents asked of her, she was ashamed of being tired. She could not, would not let the pit swallow her up, as much as she sometimes wanted it to.”

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Book:The Magician's Land
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“I think you’re magicians because you’re unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.”

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Book:The Magicians
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“He had finished his quest, and it had cost him everything and everyone he'd done it for. The equation balanced perfectly: all canceled out. And without his crown, or his throne, or Fillory, or even his friends, he had no idea who he was. But something had changed inside him too. He didn't understand it yet, but he felt it. Somehow, even though he'd lost everything, he felt more like a king now than he ever did when he was one. Not like a toy king. He felt real.”

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Book:The Magician King
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“They all woke up early the next morning when the Muntjac ran aground... “I will speak to the ship,” Julia said... It wasn’t immediately clear what had been settled, or how, but it became apparent. They floated free of the bottom and began gliding forward again as if nothing had happened. Quentin only figured it out when he happened to look back at their wake. Enormous old planks and beams and other assorted carpentry were bobbing and turning in the water behind them. The Muntjac was making herself smaller, rebuilding herself from the keel up and discarding the extra wood as she went. She was giving up her body for them... “Thank you, old girl,” he said, just in case it, or she, could hear him. He patted the worn railing. “You’ve saved us one more time.” ...In the morning when they woke up the sea was shallow enough to wade in, and the Muntjac had become a flat single-masted raft... At noon they ran aground again—the front edge of the raft crunched to a stop on the sandy bottom. That was it; the Muntjac was going no farther. She had nothing more to give.”

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Book:The Magician King
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“This is a feeling that you had, Quentin, she said. Once, a very long time ago. A rare one. This is how you felt when you were eight years old, and you opened one of the Fillory books for the first time, and you felt awe and joy and hope and longing all at once. You felt them very strongly, Quentin. You dreamed of Fillory then, with a power and an innocence that not many people ever experience. That's where all this began for you. You wanted the world to be better than it was.”

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Book:The Magician's Land
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“This is a feeling that you had, Quentin,' she said. 'Once, a very long time ago. A rare one. This is how you felt when you were eight years old, and you opened one of the Fillory books for the first time, and you felt awe and joy and hope and longing all at once. You felt them very strongly, Quentin. You dreamed of Fillory then, with a power and an innocence that not many ever experience. That's where all this began for you. You wanted the world to be better than it was.”

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Book:The Magician's Land
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“Dear Q, Hell of a thing getting you out of that dungeon. Richard showed up, finally, for which I suppose we should be grateful, though G-d knows he doesn't make it easy. We wanted to stay, Q, but it was hard, and getting harder every day. The centaurs said it wasn't working. But if you're reading this then you woke up after all. I'm sorry about everything. I know you are too. I know I said I didn't need a family to become who I was supposed to be, but it turned out that I did. And it was you. We'll meet again. -E”

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Book:The Magicians
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“Quentin hugged him so hard that Eliot spilled his whiskey down his front, which he complained about loudly, but Quentin didn’t care. He had to make sure Eliot was real and solid. It made no sense that he was here, but thank God he was. Quentin had had enough of sadness and horror and futility for one day. He needed a friend, somebody who knew him from the old days. And seeing Eliot here, out of the blue, for no reason whatsoever, felt like proof that impossible things were still possible. He needed that too.”

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Book:The Magician's Land
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“The one student he and every other First Year at Brakebills was immediately obsessed with was little Alice, of the tiny glass creature, but it quickly became apparent that in spite of being way ahead of the rest of her year academically she was cripplingly shy, to the point where there wasn’t much point in trying to talk to her. When approached at meals she answered questions in whispered monosyllables, her gaze dropping to the tablecloth in front of her as if weighed down by some infinite inner shame. She was almost pathologically unable to make eye contact, and she had a way of hiding her face behind her hair that it made it clear how agonizing it was for her to be the object of human attention.”

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Book:The Magicians
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“Needless to say, that meant that the Braekbills student body was quite the psychological menagerie. Carrying that much onboard cognitive processing power had a way of distorting your personality. And to actually want to work that hard, you had to be at least a little bit screwed up.”

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Book:The Magician's Land
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“...In books there's always somebody standing by ready to say hey, the world's in danger, evil's on the rise, but if you're really quick and take this ring and put it in that volcano over there everything will be fine. "But in real life that guy never turns up. He's never there. He's busy handing out advice in the next universe over. In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't. There's no answers in the back of the book.”

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Book:The Magician's Land
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