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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

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Lev Grossman
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: June 26
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Lexington
Massachusetts
Critics
Courting
Internet
Scarred
Probably
Knuckles
Enjoy
Accidentally
Persons
Stumble
Person
Controversy
Book
Occasionally
Weird
Knuckle

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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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I guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy books.
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His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.
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You don't want to move toward some utopian literary situation where everybody's free of all conventions. That's ridiculous! Conventions are what you need. You have nothing to break down if you don't have conventions.
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My ultimate goal is to drive people back to the books, when I think of an adaptation.
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We have lived too long. The great days are past.
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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.
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Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late.
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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.
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I recognize that on paper, you can't really tell that I'm a fan or a nerd.
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Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do? Oh, absolutely, Quentin said. Maybe even more.
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It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.
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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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The line between outside and inside is fuzzier in fantasy. Maybe that's something people are looking for.
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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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I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever read about endings was Peter Brooks' 'Reading for the Plot. '
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I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.
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Every year the literary press praises dozens if not hundreds of novels to the skies, asserting explicitly or implicitly that these books will probably not be suffering water damage in the basements of their authors' houses 20 years from now. But historically, anyway, that's not the way the novelistic ecology works.
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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.
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It's a great thing when you feel that you recognize yourself, deeply and movingly, in a work of literature.
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