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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

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

Fans Nerd Paper Trouble
People – me included – want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
LEV GROSSMAN

Book People Want
I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.
LEV GROSSMAN

Important Influence White
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
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 love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
LEV GROSSMAN

Breaking Crossing Line Lines Rules
I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.
LEV GROSSMAN

East Tribe Way
My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
LEV GROSSMAN

Adults Book Groups
I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.
LEV GROSSMAN

College Littles Long Study
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
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
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 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 real world is horrible.
LEV GROSSMAN

Horrible Real World
He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.
LEV GROSSMAN

Complete Merely Quest Something
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
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 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
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
His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he’d gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between.
LEV GROSSMAN

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

Ignorance Neglect Rulers
Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.
LEV GROSSMAN

Enthcuse Intelligent Tree
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

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Lev Grossman Quotes