Quote

It's a great thing when you feel that you recognize yourself, deeply and movingly, in a work of literature.

Lev Grossman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Lev Grossman
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: June 26
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Lexington
Massachusetts
Great
Thing
Work
Deeply
Recognize
Literature
Feel
Feels

More quotes by Lev Grossman

Image
It's very important, at least to me as a writer, that there be some rules on the table when I'm writing. Rules come from genres. You're writing in a genre, there are rules, which is great because then you can break the rules. That's when really exciting things happen.
Lev Grossman
Image
I recognize that on paper, you can't really tell that I'm a fan or a nerd.
Lev Grossman
Image
Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.
Lev Grossman
Image
We have lived too long. The great days are past.
Lev Grossman
Image
He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.
Lev Grossman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People - me included - want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
Lev Grossman
Image
We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.
Lev Grossman
Image
Read everything. If you haven't read everything, you'll never be able to write anything.
Lev Grossman
Image
How often have I met and disliked writers whose books I love and conversely, hated the books and then wound up liking the writer? Too often.
Lev Grossman
Image
A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength.
Lev Grossman
Image
Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings.
Lev Grossman
Image
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
Image
Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.
Lev Grossman
Image
I guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy books.
Lev Grossman
Image
I don't know if I've ever derived such an immediate sense of calm and well-being from any book as I did from 'Right Ho, Jeeves.' It was like I was Pac-Man and the book was a power-up.
Lev Grossman
Image
As a writer I'm more drawn to villains who are just slightly mad.
Lev Grossman
Image
Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.
Lev Grossman
Image
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