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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.

Lev Grossman

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

Book Dark Kings Pseudonymous
People – me included – want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
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Book People Want
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 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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Destined Ends Forgotten Majority
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
You’re saying the gods don’t have free will.” “The power to make mistakes,” Penny said. “Only we have that. Mortals
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Choices Mistakes Pennies
We have lived too long. The great days are past.
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Day Great Long Past
I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
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Breaking Crossing Line Lines Rules
He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.
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Complete Merely Quest Something
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.
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Book Country House
Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do?” “Oh, absolutely,” Quentin said. “Maybe even more.
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Hate Parent Promise
Don’t take anyone’s writing advice too seriously.
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Advice Seriously Writing
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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Glimpse Looks Soul
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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Interesting Numbers Observed Order
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
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 magician is strong because he feels the pain between what the world is and what he would make of it.
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Magical Pain Strong World
We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.
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Ignorance Neglect Rulers
I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.
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College Littles Long Study
Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it’s much too late.
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Late Magic Stuff Too
The truth doesn’t always make a good story, does it?
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Good Make Stories
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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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
Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.
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Careful Catch Hunts Lest
My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
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Adults Book Groups
I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.
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Important Influence White
Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.
LEV GROSSMAN

Enthcuse Intelligent Tree

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Lev Grossman Quotes