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 GROSSMANStop 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.
More Lev Grossman Quotes
-
-
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 -
Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it’s much too late.
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
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 -
Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do?” “Oh, absolutely,” Quentin said. “Maybe even more.
LEV GROSSMAN -
My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
LEV GROSSMAN -
Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.
LEV GROSSMAN -
His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.
LEV GROSSMAN -
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