The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all – in the end the vast majority of them simply aren’t that great, and are destined to be forgotten.
LEV GROSSMANEscapism has value, even if I don’t know what its value is, exactly. Maybe it’s just part of some healthy way that we deal with the world.
More Lev Grossman Quotes
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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.
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Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do?” “Oh, absolutely,” Quentin said. “Maybe even more.
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Escapism has value, even if I don’t know what its value is, exactly. Maybe it’s just part of some healthy way that we deal with the world.
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The real world is horrible.
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My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
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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.
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A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I’ve just gotten in the habit of forgiving.
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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.
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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.’
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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.
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We have lived too long. The great days are past.
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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.
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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!
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He wasn’t surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you’ve done all the work to get something you don’t even want it anymore.
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I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
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His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.
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People – me included – want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
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Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it’s much too late.
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A big silvery janitor. Penny, this can’t be how the universe works.” “In the Order we call it ‘inverse profundity.’ We’ve observed it in any number of cases. The deeper you go into the cosmic mysteries, the less interesting everything gets.
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I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.
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It’s an engrossing look at the way the flow of information shapes history-as well as a rare glimpse into the soul of the hardcore geek
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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.
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The problem with growing up is that once you’re grown up, the people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.
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We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.
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Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.
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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.
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