297 Quotes by Naomi Novik

That was a story, too; they all had stories.

The Magicians brilliantly explores the hidden underbelly of fantasy and easy magic, taking what’s simple on the surface and turning it over to show us the complicated writhing mess beneath. It’s like seeing the worlds of Narnia and Harry Potter through a 3-D magnifying glass.

Some sorcerers get an affinity for weather magic, or transformation spells, or fantastic combat magics like dear Orion. I got an affinity for mass destruction.

My girl, my brave girl had done this. She had gone and come back bloody and she had brought us back the spring. And she had come back, she had come back, which was worth all the spring and more for me.

I was a glaring blot on the perfection. But I didn’t care: I didn’t feel I owed him beauty.

No one had ever shouted at me in my life: my mother with her quiet voice, my gentle father. But I found something bitter inside myself, something of that winter blown into my heart: the sound of my mother coughing, and the memory of the story the way they’d told it in the village square so many times, about a girl who made herself a queen with someone else’s gold, and never paid her debts.

The Magnati have all been summoned for the funeral, and I’ll be announcing our betrothal once they’re gathered.

I had people, in the plural, that I could ask to join me in the library, and even if they said no, they weren’t really saying no, they were only saying not this time.

You’ve been inexpressibly lucky,” he said finally. “And inexpressibly mad, although in your case the two seem to be the same thing.