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His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he’d gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.

Lev Grossman

Maybe there’s a sense that technology isn’t necessarily the answer to a lot of our problems. Fantasy offers readers a less radically alienated world – a world where desires and feelings that normally are trapped inside your mind are made real in the form of magic.
LEV GROSSMAN

Feelings Real Technology
A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I’ve just gotten in the habit of forgiving.
LEV GROSSMAN

Book Forgiving Habit
Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it’s much too late.
LEV GROSSMAN

Late Magic Stuff Too
A magician is strong because he feels the pain between what the world is and what he would make of it.
LEV GROSSMAN

Magical Pain Strong World
I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
LEV GROSSMAN

Breaking Crossing Line Lines Rules
We have lived too long. The great days are past.
LEV GROSSMAN

Day Great Long Past
Supposedly I’ve got traces of an English accent, though I can’t hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who’s English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian.
LEV GROSSMAN

Exacerbated Facts Mother Thinking
We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.
LEV GROSSMAN

Ignorance Neglect Rulers
By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn’t doing it.
LEV GROSSMAN

Annoyed Enough Should Something
The truth doesn’t always make a good story, does it?
LEV GROSSMAN

Good Make Stories
I feel that’s one of the central questions of fantasy. What did we lose when we entered the 20th and 21st century, and how can we mourn what we lost, and what can we replace it with? We’re still asking those questions in an urgent way.
LEV GROSSMAN

Asking Fantasy Way
The problem with growing up is that once you’re grown up, the people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.
LEV GROSSMAN

Fun Growing People Up
I’ve only read three books by Stephen King. When I was 10 I read ‘The Long Walk,’ one of his pseudonymous Bachman books. In my early 20s, while trapped on a family vacation, I read ‘The Dark Half,’ which taught me a word I have never forgotten: psychopomp. Now I have read ’11/22/63.’
LEV GROSSMAN

Book Dark Kings Pseudonymous
You’re all so obsessed with other worlds, you’re so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you’ve never bothered to figure out what’s going on here!
LEV GROSSMAN

Contentment Obsessed Other Worlds
Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.
LEV GROSSMAN

Advice Seriously Writing
People – me included – want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
LEV GROSSMAN

Book People Want
It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.
LEV GROSSMAN

Easy Turnsm Something
The real world is horrible.
LEV GROSSMAN

Horrible Real World
In a way fighting was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.
LEV GROSSMAN

Damage Fall Fighting Merely Pain
I recognize that on paper, you can’t really tell that I’m a fan or a nerd.
LEV GROSSMAN

Fans Nerd Paper Trouble
The new Web is a very different thing. It’s a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it’s really a revolution.
LEV GROSSMAN

Contribute Different People Silicon Small Together
He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.
LEV GROSSMAN

Complete Merely Quest Something
Young minds – young brains – need stories and ideas like the ones in those [censored and banned] books in order to grow. They need ideas that you disagree with. They need ideas that I disagree with. Or they’ll never be able to figure out what ideas they believe in.
LEV GROSSMAN

Believe Book Need Order Stories
The danger would be going back, or staying still. The only way out was through. The past was ruins, but the present was still in play.
LEV GROSSMAN

Past Play Ruin Stay
I loved fantasy, but I particularly loved the stories in which somebody got out of where they were and into somewhere better – as in the Chronicles Of Narnia, The Wizard Of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.
LEV GROSSMAN

Cartoon Dragons Wizards
The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.
LEV GROSSMAN

Hero Real Sidekicks Villian
I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.
LEV GROSSMAN

East Tribe Way

His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he’d gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.

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His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he’d gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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