It was funny about magic, how messy and imperfect it was. When people said something worked like magic they meant that it cost nothing and did exactly what you wanted it to. But there were lots of things magic couldn't do. It couldn't raise the dead. It couldn't make you happy. It couldn't make you good-looking. And even with the things it could do, it didn't always do them right. And it always, always cost something. [208]

I just finished reading The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman, the Return of the Jedi of his Magicians trilogy.

At the top end you had some fairies squeeing at supersonic pitches; fairies thought all this military stuff was pretty silly, but they went along with it for the same reason that fairies ever did anything, namely, for the lulz. [40]

Drinks were a lot like books, really; it didn't matter where you were, the contents of a vodka tonic were always more or less the same, and you could count on them to take you away to somewhere better or at least make your present arrangements seem more manageable. [60]

In my later life I have known alcoholics, more than a few, and I recognized in their faces some of what I saw in Martin's. Loyal prophets of an indifferent god. [178]

Looks like she was planning to ride this bomb down like Slim Pickens. [267]