“Fanfiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don't do it for money. That's not what it's about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction. They're fans, but they're not silent, couchbound consumers of media. The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.”

“In one huge leather-gloved fist Jollyby held up a large, madly kicking hare by its ears.'Son of a bitch,' Dauntless said. 'He caught it.'Dauntless was a talking horse. She just didn't talk much.”

“Look, who's the talking bear here?” Quentin snapped. “Is it you? Are you the talking fucking bear? All right. So shut the fuck up.”

“You don't have to do anything. This is what you don't understand! You don't know any older magicians except our professors. It's a wasteland out there. Out here. You can do nothing or anything or everything, and none of it matters. You have to find something to really care about to keep from running totally off the rails. A lot of magicians never find it.”

“There is something beyond freedom that people need: work, love, belief in something, commitment to something. Freedom is not enough.It's necessary but it'd not sufficient. It's what you do with freedom - what you give it up for - that matters”

“That’s what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a child’s game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didn’t matter. Death didn’t respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it.”

“Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should.”