Favorite Quotations from The Magicians


Quentin did a magic trick. Nobody noticed.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Once magic was real everything else just seemed to unreal.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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