The Magician King Quotations


"Careful what you hunt," Julia said, "lest you catch it."

***

"...that's not Fillory. Your kingdom ends here. Here you're a king, you're all-powerful. You're not king of any of that. Out there you're just Quentin. Are you sure that's going to be enough?"

***

Here he was powerful. There, he didn't know what he was.

***

Though the funny thing about never being asked for anything is that after a while you start to feel like maybe you don't have anything worth giving.

***
That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.

***

Everybody wanted to be the hero of their won story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.

***

Maybe this was the only way it could have gone. You didn't get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.

***

He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.

The Magician King

I liked The Magician King much more than The Magicians. The Magicians was a "safe" book. The whole time I was reading The Magicians, I knew that everything was going to work out okay (and it did...for the most part). The Magicians had danger but the same type of danger that the early Harry Potter books had danger. The Magician King is different. This book had danger like the latter Harry Potter books. Although you knew that the hero was going to make it through, you didn't know what that meant and what that would look like. Also, I liked how we got to find out what happened to Julia during the first book, how she became a hedge witch. It was interesting to juxtapose Quentin's lack of appreciation for Brakebills from the first book with Julia's comments that Quentin always gets what he wants and expects in this book. 

I like how this book went back and forth between the current adventure and what happened to Julia during the first book. I wonder if the next book will focus on the current adventure and what Janet was doing during this book. 

I enjoyed this book much more than the first book in this series. I felt that the plot was constantly moving forward. Although I like a good character piece, I felt that The Magicians spent too much time getting to know the characters when there wasn't enough to get to know yet. We got to know them before they had grown into who they were going to be. There wasn't enough there yet to appreciate when we met them. 

Anyway, this was a fun book. Oh. FYI, there is a rape scene in the book. It is not very descriptive, but I thought I should mention it, because I wasn't expecting it. I am not a fan of books with violence against women. I probably would have read this book anyway, even if I had known in advance. However, I question if I will read the next one in the series (if there is a next one). The rape made sense for the plot and everything. It wasn't completely meaningless. It is just not my cup of tea.

Interpretations & Information on The Assassin's Apprentice

More information on The Assassin's Apprentice and Robin Hobb...




Quotations from The Assassin's Apprentice



“When you cut pieces out of the truth to avoid looking like a fool you end up looking like a moron instead.”

“Don’t do what you can’t undo, until you’ve considered what you can’t do once you’ve done it.”

“Nothing takes the heart out of a man more than the expectation of failure.”

“Very little worth knowing is taught by fear.”

"Most prisons are of our own making. A man makes his own freedom, too."

"We left. Walking uphill and into the wind. That suddenly seemed a metaphor for my whole life."

The Assassin's Apprentice

I really enjoyed this book. It was a quick read and held my interest the entire time. I thought magic was handled in an interesting way unlike Harry Potter who can use magic for pretty much anything, magic in this series has significant consequences if abused. Keep in mind that this is a series and now that I finished the first book, I feel compelled to read the next book. sigh. I need to stop reading books with sequels. I enjoyed the political intrigue of this book and am excited that there are so many directions that the plot can go in the future books. 

Interpretations of Bonk!

Here are some links to information about Bonk!

Sunday Book Review

Mary Roach: 10 Things You Didn't Know about Orgasm


Bonk! Quotations


“It is the mind that speaks a woman's heart, not the vaginal walls.”

“The paper does not provide the exact number of penises eaten by ducks, but the author says there have been enough over the years to prompt the coining of a popular saying: 'I better get home or the ducks will have something to eat.”

“Footnote: In 1998, a woman in Saline, Michigan received a patent for a Decorative Penile Wrap...The patent included three pages of drawings, including a penis wearing a ghost outfit, another in the robes of the Grim Reaper, and one dressed up to look like a snowman. ”

“Viagra isn't the only drug being prescribed off-label for women with arousal problems. Los Angeles urologist Jennifer Berman told me some doctors are prescribing low doses of Ritalin. Drugs like Ritalin improve a person's focus, so it stands to reason that it would make it easier to stay attuned to subtle changes taking place in one's body. 'It enables a woman to focus on the task at hand,' said Berman, managing, though surely not intending, to make sex sound like homework.”

Bonk!

I love Mary Roach's writing style. I cannot stand most nonfiction, because I feel that the author tries to hide his/her opinion in third person narration. Mary Roach uses the "I" pronoun throughout the book and makes it quite clear when she is citing journal articles versus discussing her own opinion. With that said, this is not my favorite book of hers. I enjoyed Stiff (book about cadavers) much more. I think this lack of enjoyment with this book has to do with my own background. When I was in college, I studied the history of sexuality, so lots of the stuff that Roach discusses in this book was not new to me. I didn't find it as "rubbernecking" as Stiff. Also, because the subject is somewhat taboo, I felt that Roach used a lot of medical jargon to keep the book classy. Because I read lots of journal articles for a living, I found myself glazing over the information. Your mileage may vary, however. Roach writes very approachable books, and I know that I will read her other books in the future.

Interpretations & More Information on The Magicians

Here is some information on The Magicians

Christopher Plover's website
Fillory fansite
Brakebills College
A Brief Guide to the Hidden Allusions in The Magicians




Favorite Quotations from The Magicians


Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed.

***

...you couldn't have everything. Or at least the available evidence pointed overwhelmingly to that conclusion.

***

He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn't think what else to do.

***

All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living, had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy. This couldn't be it. It had been diverted somewhere else, to somebody else, and he'd been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead.

***

In Fillory things mattered in a way they didn't in this world. In Fillory you felt the appropriate emotions when things happened. Happiness was a real, actual, achievable possibility. It came when you called. Or no, it never left you in the first place.

***

The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.

***

If the interviewer actually turned out to be a gatekeeper to the magical land of Fillory, he thought, it was too bad he wasn't wearing more practical shoes.

***

He was experimenting cautiously with the idea of being happy, dipping an uncertain toe into those intoxicating carbonated waters. It wasn't something he'd had much practice at.

***

Learning magic was nothing like that. It turned out to be about as tedious as it was possible for the study of powerful and mysterious supernatural forces to be.

***

Once magic was real everything else just seemed to unreal.

***

Most people are blind to magic. They move through a blank and empty world. They're bored with their lives, and there's nothing they can do about it. They're eaten alive by longing, and they're dead before they die.

***

That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bonb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I'm kind of glad he hit you.

***

...it was so easy to ignore people when you understood how little power they really had over you...

***

It never failed to astonish him, then or ever, how much of the world around him was mysterious and hidden from view.

***

"The problem with growing up," Quentin said, "is that once you're grown up, people who aren't grown up aren't fun anymore."

***

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.

***

We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.

***

It was so much easier to be angry. Being angry made him feel strong, even though -- and this contradiction did nothing to diminish his anger -- he was angry only because his position was so weak.

***

He'd started that little speech speaking normally and he ended it shouting. In a way fighting like this was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.

***

Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.

***

There's no getting away from yourself. Not even in Fillory.

***

Now he had answers, but they weren't doing what answers were supposed to do: they weren't making things simpler or easier. They weren't helping.

***

He could have eked out his sad wasted life with movies and books and masturbation and alcohol like everybody else. He would never have known the horror of really getting what he thought he wanted. He could have spared himself and everybody else the cost of it.

***

Sure, you can live out your dreams, but it'll only turn you into a monster. Better to stay home and do card tricks in your bedroom instead.

The Magicians

I hadn't heard much about this book except that it was like Harry Potter, but if he had gone to college and drank beer instead of going to Hogwarts and drinking butterbeer. At times I found the references to various vices from alcohol to sex a bit tiring (yes! the characters are college students and figuring out their lives! we get it!); however, these references are necessary, because the book is about people coming of age and discovering who they are and figuring out their lives. About 3/4 of the book is character development and getting to know the characters. The actual action/plot movement doesn't happen until the very end. There were several plot threads that didn't seem like they were going to weave together, but they did in the end. It was nice to see random bits of plot come together. I found the protagonist a bit tiring but then again he was acting like a stereotypical 20-year-old, and I really couldn't fault him for that. I think most people would classify this book as a "coming of age" book; however, I don't really think that the protagonist "came of age" by the end of the book. I have started the next book in the series (Magician King), and I am excited to discover whether the protagonist has grown at all since the last book or if he will grow during this one.

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