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You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.

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
Quests
Quest
Didn
Wanted

More quotes by Lev Grossman

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People - me included - want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
Lev Grossman
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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
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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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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.
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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
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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.
Lev Grossman
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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.
Lev Grossman
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I mean, when you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life.
Lev Grossman
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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!
Lev Grossman
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It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.
Lev Grossman
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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
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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
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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.
Lev Grossman
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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
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Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all.
Lev Grossman
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There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell.
Lev Grossman
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It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.
Lev Grossman
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It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost.
Lev Grossman
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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.
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