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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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Lev Grossman
Age: 55
Born: 1969
Born: June 26
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Lexington
Massachusetts
Happened
Change
Mind
World
Mets
Magic

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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.
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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.
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My ultimate goal is to drive people back to the books, when I think of an adaptation.
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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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A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I've just gotten in the habit of forgiving.
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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.
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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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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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Young minds - young brains - need stories and ideas like the ones in those [censored and banned] books in order to grow. They need ideas that you disagree with. They need ideas that I disagree with. Or they'll never be able to figure out what ideas they believe in.
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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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Though the funny thing about never being asked for anything is that after a while you start to feel like maybe you don’t have anything worth giving.
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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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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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Supposedly I've got traces of an English accent, though I can't hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who's English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian.
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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.
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Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do? Oh, absolutely, Quentin said. Maybe even more.
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Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.
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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.
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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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You don’t learn about yourself by being alone, you learn about yourself from other people.
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