“It takes dispassionate bravado to speak of oneself in the third person. Walter has such bravado: it is one of the chief reasons for his success.”

“If one takes the path of success, then one ends up either successful or unsuccessful, there is no third alternative.”

“I am Hel,” she agreed. “Sometimes called Hela, though most mortals dare not speak my name at all. No jokes, Magnus Chase? Who the Hel are you? What the Hel do you want? You look Hela bad. I was expecting more bravado.”

“One of the chief features of incompetence was an inability to see it in oneself.”

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.”

“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others.”

“In my experience, it takes only one person to have a successful relationship, and that's me.”

“At least when one speaks of oneself one is passionate, well-informed and specific.”

“Through such impressions one gathers oneself, wins oneself back from the exacting multiplicity, which speaks and chatters there (and how talkative it is!), and one slowly learns to recognize the very few Things in which something eternal endures that one can love and something solitary that one can gently take part in.”

“An observer studying the Solar system dispassionately, and finding himself capable of bringing the four giant planets to his notice, could reasonably say that the Solar system consisted of one star, four planets, and some traces of debris.”