The Magician's Land

by Lev Grossman

It didn’t matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home.

Maybe when you give up your dreams, you find out that there’s more to life than dreaming.

It was funny how just when you thought you knew yourself through and through, you stumbled on a new kind of strength, a fresh reserve of power inside you that you never knew you had, and all at once you found yourself burning a little brighter and hotter than you ever had before.

It was really, really unpleasant. But at the same time I could feel the ordeal remaking me. You know? Like the desert itself was smelting me, melting away weaknesses and impurities and extracting what was hard and true.

“Wishes are for children,” Jane Chatwin said. “I grew up.”

She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the world, slide it aside for a little bit, and let her please, please just be somewhere and somebody else.

There was nothing fair about Fillory, just as there was nothing fair about people’s fathers going to war, and their mothers going mad, and the way we among all animals were cursed with a longing for somewhere better, somewhere that never existed and never would.

Magic was wild feelings, the kind that escaped out of you and into the world and changed things. There was a lot of skill to it, and a lot of learning, and a lot of work, but that was where the power began: the power to enchant the world.

It was the strangest thing, but he was looking forward to everything so much, he could hardly stand it. He never would have believed it. He never thought he would.