# Quote — Lev Grossman, The Magicians

> “Sometimes I wonder if man was really meant to discover magic,” Fogg said expansively. “It doesn’t really make sense. It’s a little too perfect, don’t you think? If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so. Words and thoughts don’t change anything. Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t. You deal with it, and you get on with your life.
>
> “Little children don’t know that. Magical thinking: that’s what Freud called it. Once we learn otherwise we cease to be children. The separation of word and thing is the essential fact on which our adult lives are founded.”

- Author: [Lev Grossman](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lev-grossman.md)
- Book: [The Magicians](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lev-grossman/the-magicians.md)
- Page: 216
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lev_Grossman#The_Magicians_(2009)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/lev-grossman/the-magicians/sometimes-i-wonder

## More from this book

> He had no interest in TV anymore—it looked like an electronic puppet show to him, an artificial version of an imitation world that meant nothing to him anyway.

p. 167 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lev-grossman/the-magicians/he-had-no-interest.md)

> “Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there’s nothing else. It’s here, and you’d better decide to enjoy it or you’re going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”
>
> “You can’t just decide to be happy.”
>
> “No, you can’t. But you can sure as hell decide to be miserable. Is that what you want?”

p. 333 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lev-grossman/the-magicians/stop-looking-for.md)

> He was experimenting cautiously with the idea of being happy, dipping and uncertain toe into those intoxicatingly carbonated waters. It wasn’t something he had much practice at.

p. 41 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/lev-grossman/the-magicians/he-was-experimenting.md)