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Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.

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
Everybody
Story
Stories
Wanted
Relief
Comic
Hero
Nobody

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I have spent many, many hours reading J.K. Rowling's work. I am a known 'Harry Potter' fan.
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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.
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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.
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You don’t learn about yourself by being alone, you learn about yourself from other people.
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There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell.
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The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.
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Don't take anyone's writing advice too seriously.
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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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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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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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It's natural for a child to assume that his or her own childhood is unremarkable.
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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.
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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.
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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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It's a great thing when you feel that you recognize yourself, deeply and movingly, in a work of literature.
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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!
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You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.
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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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We have lived too long. The great days are past.
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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.
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