The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.

You don’t learn about yourself by being alone, you learn about yourself from other people.

If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.

You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.

He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.

I have no doubt there are magician psychopaths, and magician serial killers. I doubt Brakebills admissions is very good at screening for those.

That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.

It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost.

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.

Don't take anyone's writing advice too seriously.

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

It was all written. When life is going to be breathed into you, and when it's going to be taken away. Each person's mission on earth is pre-planned.

All that's different about me is that I still ask the questions most people stopped asking at age five.

Every time we watch over one another, godlike qualities of love, patience, kindness, generosity, and spiritual commitment fill the souls of those we visit and enlarge our souls as well.

Remember the enemy of all painting is gray: a painting will almost always appear grayer than it is, on account of its oblique position under the light.

Theoretical concepts of music and extended techniques are more like seasoning to me; they're not the meal. I like outside music that still has a sense of forward motion and an emotive quality to it.

I am a private person and that has always been my personality.

You said you're going far away," Tamaru said. "How far away are we talking about?" "It's a distance that can't be measured." "Like the distance that separates one person's heart from another's.

I kept a diary as a teenager but I never would have shared it with anyone. Still, I think it's very good practice to write things down.

You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better.

You know, what can I say. If a relationship can't work out, make a record.