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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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It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.
Lev Grossman
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As a writer I'm more drawn to villains who are just slightly mad.
Lev Grossman
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Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late.
Lev Grossman
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That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.
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 recognize that on paper, you can't really tell that I'm a fan or a nerd.
Lev Grossman
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The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general.
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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The line between outside and inside is fuzzier in fantasy. Maybe that's something people are looking for.
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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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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The problem with growing up is that once you're grown up, the people who aren't grown up aren't fun anymore.
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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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.'
Lev Grossman
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That’s what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a child’s game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didn’t matter. Death didn’t respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it.
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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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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Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.
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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A magician is strong because he feels the pain between what the world is and what he would make of it.
Lev Grossman