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I feel that's one of the central questions of fantasy. What did we lose when we entered the 20th and 21st century, and how can we mourn what we lost, and what can we replace it with? We're still asking those questions in an urgent way.

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
Lost
Urgent
Stills
Central
Still
Fantasy
Feel
Questions
Feels
Asking
Way
Lose
Mourn
Loses
Entered
Century
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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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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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I think for a long time, I was paralyzed by some of my hopes and ideals for what my life was going to be like. I had this perfect vision of how my life should go, but it seemed - it was - impossible to realize, so I sat around for a long, long time doing almost nothing at all.
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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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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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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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You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.
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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 time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost.
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Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change.
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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.
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People - me included - want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
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He wasn't surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you've done all the work to get something you don't even want it anymore.
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