Fei Fei > Fei Fei's Quotes

“When he graduated he’d thought life was going to be like a novel, starring him on his own personal hero’s journey, and that the world would provide him with an endless series of evils to triumph over and life lessons to learn. It took him a while to figure out that wasn’t how it worked.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“Sometimes he looked at her and thought, Gosh, I wonder what's underneath all that anger, all that hard glossy armor? Maybe there's just an innocent, wounded little girl in there who wants to come out and play and be loved and get happy. But now he wondered if maybe that little girl was long gone, or if she'd ever been there at all. What was under all that armor, all that anger? More anger, and more armor. Anger and armor, all the way down.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“The library was still giving trouble: a few books in some of the more obscure corners of the stacks retained some autonomy, dating back to an infamous early experiment with flying books, and lately they'd begun to breed. Shocked undergraduates had stumbled on books in the very act.
Which sounded interesting, but so far the resulting offspring had either been predictably derivative (in fiction) or stunningly boring (nonfiction); hybrid pairings between fiction and nonfiction were the most vital. The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren't breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program. The library committee had an epic secret meeting about the ethics of literary eugenics which ended in a furious deadlock.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“A Fillory without a god. It was a radical notion. But he thought about it, and it didn't seem like a terrible one. They would be on their own this time - the kings, the queens, the people, the animals, the spirits, the monsters. They'd have to decide what was right and just and fair for themselves.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“In books there’s always somebody standing by ready to say hey, the world’s in danger, evil’s on the rise, but if you’re really quick and take this ring and put it in that volcano over there everything will be fine. “But in real life that guy never turns up. He’s never there. He’s busy handing out advice in the next universe over. In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone’s just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you’ve figured it out and done it, you’ll never know whether you were right or wrong. You’ll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn’t. There’s no answers in the back of the book.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magician's Land

“But walking along Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, in his black overcoat and his gray interview suit, Quentin knew he wasn’t happy. Why not? He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn’t think what else to do.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“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.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“Magic, Quentin discovered, wasn’t romantic at all. It was grim and repetitive and deceptive. And he worked his ass off and became very good at it.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn't get--and never would get.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“The worst part about going crazy is that when you're not crazy anymore, you just don't know what to think of yourself.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“They played good girls to my parents. Not that they weren't good girls. That's exactly what they were: good girls who wanted to pretend they were bad girls but who never would be bad girls because they were too decent.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Through all of youth I was looking for you without knowing what I was looking for —W. S. Merwin”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I wondered what it would be like, to love a girl, to know how a girl thinks, to see the world through a girl's eyes. Maybe they knew more than boys. Maybe they understood things that boys could never understand.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“The problem is not that I don't love my mother and father. The problem is that I don't know how to love them.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“He didn’t say anything. And then I heard him crying. So I just let him cry. There was nothing I could do. Except listen to his pain. I could do that. I could hardly stand it. But I could do that. Just listen to his pain.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“My dad picked me up and rocked me in the chair. I felt small and weak and I wanted to hold him back but I couldn’t because there wasn’t any strength in my arms, and I wanted to ask him if he had held me like this when I was a boy because I didn’t remember and why didn’t I remember. I started to think that maybe I was still dreaming, but my mother was changing the sheets on my bed so I knew that everything was real. Except me. I think I was mumbling. My father held me tighter and whispered something, but not even his arms or his whispers could keep me from trembling. My mom dried my sweaty body with a towel and she and my dad changed me into a clean T-shirt and clean underwear. And then I said the strangest thing, “Don’t throw my T-shirt away. Dad gave it to me.” I knew I was crying, but I didn’t know why because I wasn’t the kind of guy who cried, and I thought that maybe it was someone else who was crying.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Matthias knew monsters, and one glance at Kaz Brekker had told him this was a creature who had spent too long in the dark–he’d brought something back with him when he’d crawled into the light.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Pekka Rollins couldn't count the threats he'd heard, the men he'd killed, or the men he'd seen die, but the look in Brekker's eye still sent a chill slithering up his spine. Some wrathful thing in this boy was beginning to get loose, and Rollin's didn't want to be around when it slipped its leash.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“Kaz heard Wylan retching. He tossed the eyeball overboard and jammed his spit-soaked handkerchief into the socket where Oomen's eye had been. Then he grabbed Oomen's jaw, his gloves leaving red smears on the enforcer's chin. His actions were smooth, precise, as if he were dealing cards at the Crow Club or picking an easy lock, but his rage felt hot and mad and unfamiliar. Something within him had torn loose.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“The next slide is titled: 'Exploring your sexuality: Healthy, but does it have to be with the Prince of England?' She apologizes for not having time to come up with better titles. Alex actively wishes for the sweet release of death.”
― Casey McQuiston, Red, White & Royal Blue

“It occurs to me then that perhaps getting my little sister drunk and explaining why I screw boys is not the most responsible move on my part.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“I swear, you would play the coquette with a well-upholstered sofa."
"First, I would not. And second, how handsome is this sofa?”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“It's beginning to feel like he's shuffling his way through the seven deadly sins, in ascending order of my favourites.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“If the Good Lord didn't want men to play with themselves, we'd have hooks for hands.”
― Mackenzi Lee, The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue

“Many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. And it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘What do I care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ Yes, evil often seems to surpass good. But then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. One morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. And so I must still have hope.”
― Vincent van Gogh

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, A Few Figs from Thistles

“Pylades: I’ll take care of you.
Orestes: It’s rotten work.
Pylades: Not to me. Not if it’s you.”
― Anne Carson, Euripides

“You remember too much,
my mother said to me recently.
Why hold onto all that? And I said,
Where can I put it down?”
― Anne Carson, Glass, Irony and God

“I still remember you
as a little girl
who overwaters plants
because she doesn’t know
when to stop giving.”
― Trista Mateer

“I promised no more poetry and I’d rather think of this as a confession: you are still the first person I want to share new things with.”
― Trista Mateer, Honeybee