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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

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

Book People Want
Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.
LEV GROSSMAN

Careful Catch Hunts Lest
Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.
LEV GROSSMAN

Magic Mind World
He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.
LEV GROSSMAN

Complete Merely Quest Something
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
I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.
LEV GROSSMAN

College Littles Long Study
His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.
LEV GROSSMAN

Jokes Personality Whole
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 GROSSMAN

Book Country House
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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Fun Growing People Up
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
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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Healthy Way World
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
Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do?” “Oh, absolutely,” Quentin said. “Maybe even more.
LEV GROSSMAN

Hate Parent Promise
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

Destined Ends Forgotten Majority
The main advantage of being a reviewer is that you read a lot. A lot of books get sent to you, and you have an amazing vantage point from which to observe what’s going on in contemporary fiction – not only genre stuff, the whole spectrum.
LEV GROSSMAN

Book Contemporary Fiction Stuff
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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Feelings Real Technology
We have lived too long. The great days are past.
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Day Great Long Past
I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.
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East Tribe Way
The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.
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Learning Nonstop Process Wonderment
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
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.
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Annoyed Enough Should Something
The truth doesn’t always make a good story, does it?
LEV GROSSMAN

Good Make Stories
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
I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.
LEV GROSSMAN

Important Influence White
I recognize that on paper, you can’t really tell that I’m a fan or a nerd.
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Fans Nerd Paper Trouble
You’re saying the gods don’t have free will.” “The power to make mistakes,” Penny said. “Only we have that. Mortals
LEV GROSSMAN

Choices Mistakes Pennies
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 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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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