I never thought about doing a sequel when I was actually writing 'The Magicians.' I only ever considered it a standalone.

You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.

And I'm not as young as I once was. At my age, I don't have time to be bored.

Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings.

By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.

Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders.

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.