“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.”

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

“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. ”

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

“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.”

“Sure, but real life’s not actually like that,” Quentin went on, fumbling after what he was sure was an important insight. “You don’t just go on fun adventures for good causes and have happy endings. You’re not going to be a character in a story, there’s nobody arranging everything for you. The real world just doesn’t work like that.”

“When the oldest Chatwin, melancholy Martin, opens the cabinet of the grandfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt’s house and slip through into Fillory...it’s like he’s opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never ac tually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into something better.”