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

Lev Grossman

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

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

Book People Want
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
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
We have lived too long. The great days are past.
LEV GROSSMAN

Day Great Long Past
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
I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.
LEV GROSSMAN

Important Influence White
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
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 real world is horrible.
LEV GROSSMAN

Horrible Real World
A magician is strong because he feels the pain between what the world is and what he would make of it.
LEV GROSSMAN

Magical Pain Strong World
Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.
LEV GROSSMAN

Magic Mind World
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
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 real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.
LEV GROSSMAN

Hero Real Sidekicks Villian
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
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
The truth doesn’t always make a good story, does it?
LEV GROSSMAN

Good Make Stories
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
I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.
LEV GROSSMAN

College Littles Long Study
The process of learning is a nonstop orgy of wonderment.
LEV GROSSMAN

Learning Nonstop Process Wonderment
I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
LEV GROSSMAN

Breaking Crossing Line Lines Rules
He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.
LEV GROSSMAN

Complete Merely Quest Something
My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
LEV GROSSMAN

Adults Book Groups

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

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

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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