A big silvery janitor. Penny, this can’t be how the universe works.” “In the Order we call it ‘inverse profundity.’ We’ve observed it in any number of cases. The deeper you go into the cosmic mysteries, the less interesting everything gets.

— Lev Grossman

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.

— Lev Grossman

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.

— Lev Grossman

As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaged in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence. Shame never came into it. He embraced his new identity as a coward. He would run in the other direction. Furthermore, he would lie down and cry and put his arms over his head or play dead. It didn't matter what he had to do, he would do it and be glad.

— Lev Grossman

Becoming an author changes your attitude too. Once you see where books come from, and how they're made, they never seem quite as sacred again.

— Lev Grossman

Becoming me was the greatest creative project of my life.

— Lev Grossman

Being a hero, the man had observed, is largely a matter of knowing one’s cues.

— Lev Grossman

...being around him wasn’t good for Quentin. He could feel himself regressing in the direction of an adolescent tantrum—it was like trying to talk to his parents. He lost all perspective on who he was and how far he’d come.

— Lev Grossman

Blue screen of death: she'd crashed his system. Oh, well. Boys were so unstable that way, full of buggy, self-contradictory code, pathetically unoptimized.

— Lev Grossman

By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.

— Lev Grossman