Abby

“Divinatory magic doesn’t generally work out well for many reasons, but one of them is because human beings aren’t very good at predicting what will make them happy. I don’t mean if you wish for something and then get it twisted in some horrible way like that stupid story about the monkey’s paw; I mean in the same prosaic way that you can sincerely be certain that you’d like a dress you see in a shop, and you buy it and take it home, and then it sits in your closet unused for years while you insist to yourself that one day you’re going to wear it, until finally you give it away with a sense of relief.”
― Naomi Novik, The Last Graduate

“Even when mundanes didn’t have science to helpfully explain the world and happily burned witches at the stake, they didn’t really believe in magic. If you believed in magic, you wouldn’t drag a witch to the stake; you’d have her lob fireballs at your enemies instead.”
― Naomi Novik, The Golden Enclaves

“When, on his return to Lud-in-the-Mist, he had been twitted for having wasted so much time on such an unworthy object, he had answered that a pig was thrall to the same master as a Mayor, and that it needed as much skill to cure the one as the other; adding that a good fiddler enjoys fiddling for its own sake, and that it is all the same to him whether he plays at a yokel’s wedding or a merchant’s funeral.”
― Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist

“It was exactly what I wanted, only once I was in it, I didn’t want it after all.”
― Naomi Novik, The Golden Enclaves