Lev Grossman

They weren’t wasted years exactly, he could never say that, but they were years in which, in spite of all his amazing gifts, he’d been conscious of somehow not quite getting the gift he wanted. Enough to get by on, maybe. Sure. But this, this was everything. Now the present had a purpose, and the future had a purpose, and even the past, their whole lives, retroactively, had meaning. Now they knew what it was for.

“You don’t just go on fun adventures for good causes and have happy endings. You’re not going to be a character in a story, there’s nobody arranging everything for you. The real world just doesn’t work like that.”

It was a relief to see that he could still admit that he cared about something.