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

Lev Grossman

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

Magic Mind World
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 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.
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Past Play Ruin Stay
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
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.
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Contribute Different People Silicon Small Together
I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.
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East Tribe Way
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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Believe Book Need Order Stories
Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.
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Enthcuse Intelligent Tree
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
People – me included – want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
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Book People Want
I recognize that on paper, you can’t really tell that I’m a fan or a nerd.
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Fans Nerd Paper Trouble
Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.
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Careful Catch Hunts Lest
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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Long Perfect Thinking
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.
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Exacerbated Facts Mother Thinking
The truth doesn’t always make a good story, does it?
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Good Make Stories
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
The problem with growing up is that once you’re grown up, the people who aren’t grown up aren’t fun anymore.
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Fun Growing People Up
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
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
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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Book Dark Kings Pseudonymous
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.
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Damage Fall Fighting Merely Pain
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
It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.
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Easy Turnsm Something
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.
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Asking Fantasy Way
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
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
I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.
LEV GROSSMAN

Breaking Crossing Line Lines Rules

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

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

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Popular Authors

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