Kalan Hurdle

“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.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“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

“As the days and weeks and seasons wore on he found himself repeating this nothing, not wanting to. Gradually he came to understand that this particular nothing was all that he could really say now. He chanted it to himself in cell blocks and dingy apartments, recited it like a litany, ripped himself to rags against the sharp and ugly poetry of it. It echoed down the grimy hallways and squandered moments of his life, the answer to every question, the lyric of all songs.”
― Scott Hawkins, The Library at Mount Char

“The only real escape from hell is to conquer it.”
― Scott Hawkins, The Library at Mount Char