The Night Circus

“We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change” 

This quotation sums up one of the novel’s central themes: the ability to challenge and change anything, even one’s fate, through sheer force of will.

“People see what they want to see. And, in most cases, what they are told to see” 

Prospero delivers this line to Celia. Here, Prospero reveals another one of the novel’s central themes: how what one sees is not always the truth and that people are often more than willing to see what they are told to.  

“People are naïve about such things ....and they would rather write them off as evil than attempt to understand them. An unfortunate truth, but a truth nonetheless” 

Here, Marco discusses people’s attitude to magic, suggesting that its easier for people to conceptualize it as “evil,” rather than attempting to understand it.