The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general.
LEV GROSSMANA novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I’ve just gotten in the habit of forgiving.
More Lev Grossman Quotes
-
-
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.
LEV GROSSMAN -
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 -
Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.
LEV GROSSMAN -
The truth doesn’t always make a good story, does it?
LEV GROSSMAN -
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 -
Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.
LEV GROSSMAN -
My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
LEV GROSSMAN -
I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.
LEV GROSSMAN -
People – me included – want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
LEV GROSSMAN -
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.
LEV GROSSMAN -
Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it’s much too late.
LEV GROSSMAN -
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 GROSSMAN -
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 -
You’re saying the gods don’t have free will.” “The power to make mistakes,” Penny said. “Only we have that. Mortals
LEV GROSSMAN -
We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.
LEV GROSSMAN -
The real world is horrible.
LEV GROSSMAN -
I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.
LEV GROSSMAN -
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.
LEV GROSSMAN -
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.
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 -
I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
LEV GROSSMAN -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.
LEV GROSSMAN