Quote

The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it?

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
Doesn
Stories
Truth
Doe
Make
Good
Always
Story

More quotes by Lev Grossman

Image
It's natural for a child to assume that his or her own childhood is unremarkable.
Lev Grossman
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Lev Grossman
Image
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
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
I went to college at Harvard, then did three years of graduate school at Yale. At both places I studied comparative literature. People find it odd that I went to both Harvard and Yale, and I guess it is odd, but that's just what people did where I grew up.
Lev Grossman
Image
It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.
Lev Grossman
Image
Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders.
Lev Grossman
Image
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
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
Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do? Oh, absolutely, Quentin said. Maybe even more.
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
I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.
Lev Grossman
Image
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
Image
He wasn't surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you've done all the work to get something you don't even want it anymore.
Lev Grossman
Image
The line between outside and inside is fuzzier in fantasy. Maybe that's something people are looking for.
Lev Grossman
Image
Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late.
Lev Grossman
Image
I'm happy to report that 'The New Press' is still in business to this day. But not thanks to me. I was a really bad publishing intern.
Lev Grossman
Image
You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.
Lev Grossman