Pania

“Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“You cannot study magic. You cannot learn it. You must ingest it. Digest it. You must merge with it. And it with you.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“We are never prepared for what we expect.”
― James A. Michener, Caravans