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Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings.
Lev Grossman
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Lev Grossman
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: June 26
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Lexington
Massachusetts
Meanings
Beginnings
Defined
Books
Book
Much
Middles
Oddly
Endings
More quotes by Lev Grossman
For just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. 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. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.
Lev Grossman
It's wonderful to play around with fantasy, because there are an amazing number of as-yet-unbroken rules out there.
Lev Grossman
That’s what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a child’s game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didn’t matter. Death didn’t respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it.
Lev Grossman
It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.
Lev Grossman
Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late.
Lev Grossman
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
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
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
Read everything. If you haven't read everything, you'll never be able to write anything.
Lev Grossman
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
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
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
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
It was strange to be naked in front of anybody. It was like that cold water out there in the bay: scary, you didn’t think you could stand it, but then you plunged in and pretty soon you got used to it. There was enough hiding in life. Sometimes you just wanted to show somebody your tits.
Lev Grossman
Wasn't there a spell for making yourself happy? Somebody must have invented one. How could he have missed it? Why didn't they teach it? Was it in the library, a flying book fluttering just out of reach, beating its wings against some high window?
Lev Grossman
I'm not one of your knockabout, knuckle-scarred, Internet-controversy-courting book critics. Occasionally I stumble into controversy accidentally, but not because I enjoy it. It's probably just because I'm a weird person.
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
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
We have lived too long. The great days are past.
Lev Grossman
It was so much easier to be angry. Being angry made him feel strong, even though-- and this contradiction did nothing to diminish his anger-- he was angry only because his position was so weak.
Lev Grossman
