Lev Grossman

She didn’t seem to care much, but Quentin kept it up anyway. You never knew what might make a difference.

Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should.

That’s what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a child’s game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didn’t matter. Death didn’t respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it.

“I hope you fail,” he said suddenly, as if he’d just made a decision about it. “I hope you never find the key, and everybody dies, and the world ends. You know why? Because then maybe this place would end too.”

“It’s good I died.” He took a shuddering breath. “I was useless. It’s good it was me and not anybody else.” His voice went away to a squeak at the end

That’s all my life is worth. One little stick can erase it all.

After all that, he hadn’t had to kill a monster or solve a riddle. He just had to come down here, to see how Benedict was doing. “Thank you. You are a hero. You really are. You always will be.”

Her face was lovely, warm and humorous and proud and fierce all at once. It was the face of a goddess. And there was something else there too—half Her face was in shadow. There was gravity there, and an understanding of grief. Everything will be all right, She seemed to say, and whatever is not, we will mourn.

Maybe it was all a game, that got crumpled up and thrown away at the end, but while you were here it was real.

So if you want to blame somebody, blame me. Put that wrong on me where it belongs and let her go through to the Far Side. Where she belongs.