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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.’

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

Anticlimactic Done Feelings Something Want
My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
LEV GROSSMAN

Adults Book Groups
Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.
LEV GROSSMAN

Advice Seriously Writing
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
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
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

Healthy Way World
The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.
LEV GROSSMAN

Learning Nonstop Process Wonderment
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 came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.
LEV GROSSMAN

East Tribe Way
It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.
LEV GROSSMAN

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

College Littles Long Study
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
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
We have lived too long. The great days are past.
LEV GROSSMAN

Day Great Long Past
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
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
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
His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.
LEV GROSSMAN

Jokes Personality Whole
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
Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.
LEV GROSSMAN

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

Book People Want
Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do?” “Oh, absolutely,” Quentin said. “Maybe even more.
LEV GROSSMAN

Hate Parent Promise

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’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.’

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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