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 GROSSMANIt’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
More Lev Grossman Quotes
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I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.
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His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.
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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.
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I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.
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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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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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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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Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it’s much too late.
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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.
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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.
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I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
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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.
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We have lived too long. The great days are past.
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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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My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
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