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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.

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

Doors Real Secret Stop Waiting
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
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 studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.
LEV GROSSMAN

College Littles Long Study
I think for a long time, I was paralyzed by some of my hopes and ideals for what my life was going to be like. I had this perfect vision of how my life should go, but it seemed – it was – impossible to realize, so I sat around for a long, long time doing almost nothing at all.
LEV GROSSMAN

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

Ignorance Neglect Rulers
I recognize that on paper, you can’t really tell that I’m a fan or a nerd.
LEV GROSSMAN

Fans Nerd Paper Trouble
My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
LEV GROSSMAN

Adults Book Groups
We have lived too long. The great days are past.
LEV GROSSMAN

Day Great Long Past
Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.
LEV GROSSMAN

Enthcuse Intelligent Tree
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
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
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
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
His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.
LEV GROSSMAN

Jokes Personality Whole
I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
LEV GROSSMAN

Breaking Crossing Line Lines Rules
The truth doesn’t always make a good story, does it?
LEV GROSSMAN

Good Make Stories
The real world is horrible.
LEV GROSSMAN

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

East Tribe Way
Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.
LEV GROSSMAN

Magic Mind World
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

Interesting Numbers Observed Order
He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.
LEV GROSSMAN

Complete Merely Quest Something
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Lev Grossman Quotes