Until the rules become background noise
“Quentin knew he wasn’t happy. Why not?
He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness.
He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices.
But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn’t think what else to do.
< … >
All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living,
had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.
This couldn’t be it. It had been diverted somewhere else, to somebody else,
and he’d been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead”
— Lev Grossman. “The Magicians.”
He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness.
He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices.
But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn’t think what else to do.
< … >
All of it just confirmed his belief that his real life, the life he should be living,
had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.
This couldn’t be it. It had been diverted somewhere else, to somebody else,
and he’d been issued this shitty substitute faux life instead”
— Lev Grossman. “The Magicians.”