Quote

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

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Lev Grossman
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: June 26
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Lexington
Massachusetts
Interesting
Meaningful
Actually
Obviously
Around
Expectations
Real
Expect
World
Realize
Realizing
Looking
Wired
Start
Brighter

More quotes by Lev Grossman

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As a writer I'm more drawn to villains who are just slightly mad.
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It's wonderful to play around with fantasy, because there are an amazing number of as-yet-unbroken rules out there.
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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.
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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
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I have spent many, many hours reading J.K. Rowling's work. I am a known 'Harry Potter' fan.
Lev Grossman
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It's a great thing when you feel that you recognize yourself, deeply and movingly, in a work of literature.
Lev Grossman
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My ultimate goal is to drive people back to the books, when I think of an adaptation.
Lev Grossman
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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
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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
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Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.
Lev Grossman
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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. '
Lev Grossman
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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
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A magician is strong because he feels the pain between what the world is and what he would make of it.
Lev Grossman
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Don't take anyone's writing advice too seriously.
Lev Grossman
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Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do? Oh, absolutely, Quentin said. Maybe even more.
Lev Grossman
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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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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
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A big silvery janitor. Penny, this can’t be how the universe works.” “In the Order we call it ‘inverse profundity.’ We’ve observed it in any number of cases. The deeper you go into the cosmic mysteries, the less interesting everything gets.
Lev Grossman
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I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.
Lev Grossman
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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