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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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You're saying the gods don't have free will. The power to make mistakes, Penny said. Only we have that. Mortals
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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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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?
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Careful what you hunt, lest you catch 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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Book tours are excellent things, and one is lucky to get to go on one, but they have a way of leeching away one's will to live.
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Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.
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His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.
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My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.
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Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late.
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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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He who completes a quest does not merely find something. He becomes something.
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I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.
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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 wonderful to play around with fantasy, because there are an amazing number of as-yet-unbroken rules out there.
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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. '
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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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We have lived too long. The great days are past.
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Don't take anyone's writing advice too seriously.
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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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