“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.”

“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. ”

“A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.”

“I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is is because you're special? Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: 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. Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.”

“Well, he wouldn't get fooled again. He wouldn't give anybody the chance. Quentin felt a new attitude of detachment descend on him. His molten anger and grief were cooling into a glossy protective coating, a hard transparent lacquer of uncaring. He felt how infinitely safer and more sound this attitude was. The trick was just not wanting anything. That was power. That was courage: the courage not to love anyone or hope for anything.”

“Quentin found himself staring at the end of his Brakebills careers across the perilously slender gap of only two months of time. It was like he'd been wending his way though a vast, glittering city, zig-zagging through side streets and wandering through buildings and haunted de Chrico arcades and little hidden piazzas, the whole time thinking that he'd barely scratched the surface, that he was just seeing a tiny sliver of one little neighborhood. And then suddenly he turned a corner and it turned out that he'd been through the whole city, it was all behind him, and all that was left was one short street leading straight out of town.”

“Quentin’s conversations with his parents were so circular and self-defeating, they sounded like experimental theater.”