Цитаты из книги «Волшебники», страница 7

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Professor March was addressing him directly.

“. . . between a subtropical cyclone and an extratropical? Quentin? In the French, please, if you can.”

Quentin blinked. He must have drifted off.

“The difference?” he hazarded. “There is no difference?”

There was a long, awkward pause, into which Quentin inserted more words in an attempt to find out what exactly the question had been and to say “baroclinic zones” as many times as possible just in case they were relevant.

She was the most visible of the Physical Kids, loud and brusque and always proposing toasts at dinner. She had terrible taste in men—the best that could be said of her endless series of boyfriends is that none of them lasted long. Pretty rather than beautiful, she had a flat, flapperish figure, but she used what she had to maximum advantage—she sent her uniforms back home to be tailored—and there was something vibrantly sexy about her ravenous, too-wide gaze. You wanted to meet it and be devoured by it.

Janet was about as annoying as a person could be and still be your friend, but Quentin was never bored around her. She was passionately loyal, and if she was obnoxious, it was only because she was so deeply tender-hearted. It made her easily wounded, and when she was wounded, she lashed out. She tortured everybody around her, but only because she was more tortured than anyone.

Because he wasn’t as self-absorbed as Eliot or Janet, he was the group’s sharpest observer, and he missed very little of what went on around him. He told Quentin that he’d been waiting for Penny to snap for weeks:

“Are you kidding? That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth, I’m kind of glad he hit you.”

Eliot sloshed some wine from his glass into a pan of red sauce on the stove.

“Never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink,” he said. “Though I guess that presupposes that there is a wine I wouldn’t drink.”

“It’s jacket and tie at all times except in your room,” Fogg explained. “There are more rules; you’ll pick them up from the others. Most boys like to choose their own ties. I am inclined to be lenient on that score, but don’t test me. Anything too exciting will be confiscated, and you’ll be forced to wear the school tie, which I know very little about these things, but I am told is cruelly unfashionable.”

“The Dean will probably be down to get you in another minute,” Eliot said. “Here’s my advice. Sit there”—he pointed to a weathered stone bench, like he was telling an overly affectionate dog to stay—“and try to look like you belong here. And if you tell him you saw me smoking, I will banish you to the lowest circle of hell. Which I’ve never been there, but if even half of what I hear is true it’s almost as bad as Brooklyn.”

Осуществишь свои мечты - станешь монстром.

You know, my entire life, ever since the first time I read “Fillory and Further,” I’ve been waiting for some powerful being to come down and say, “Quentin Coldwater, you are The One.” Every book, every movie, it’s about one special guy. He’s chosen. In real life, for every one guy, there are a billion people who aren’t. Almost none of us are the one.

Это большая политика, Квентин. Мы дошли до того, что стали почитать невежество и безразличие лучшими чертами правителя.

У меня вон даже специальность определить не смогли — я нифиганемант.