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All of magic essentially involves sneaking something you want past reality while it’s distracted and looking the other way.

— Naomi Novik Scholomance fantasy series (2020)

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More quotes by Naomi Novik

But the world I wanted wasn't the world I lived in, and if I would do nothing until I could repair every terrible thing at once, I would do nothing forever.

Spinning Silver (2018)

But hope is good strong drink, especially when you can get someone else to buy it for you.

Scholomance fantasy series (2020)

A robber who steals a knife and cuts himself cannot cry out against the woman who kept it sharp.

Spinning Silver (2018)

Thrice, mortal maiden,” in a rhyme almost like a song, “Thrice you shall turn silver to gold for me, or be changed to ice yourself.

Spinning Silver (2018)

I love having existential crises at bedtime, it's so restful.

Scholomance fantasy series (2020)

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Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue:
Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true.

Richard Francis Burton The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

Mircea Eliade Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1967)

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

Thomas Jefferson

The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.

Confucius

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Naomi Novik (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.