Latest Lev Grossman Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• I'm now much more excited about genre distinctions. What I still see breaking down are more the hierarchical arrangements of genres. That is, "There is literary fiction, and then there are lesser genres." I'm much more clear on the idea that literary fiction is itself a genre. It is not above other genres. It is down there in the muck with all the other genres, and it's doing the wonderful things that it does, but to give it a Y-axis, to make it high and low, just seems absurd. I stand by that.

  Lev Grossman

  Giving, Wonderful, Excited

• The main advantage of being a reviewer is that you read a lot. A lot of books get sent to you, and you have an amazing vantage point from which to observe what's going on in contemporary fiction - not only genre stuff, the whole spectrum.

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Contemporary Fiction, Stuff

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• The line between outside and inside is fuzzier in fantasy. Maybe that's something people are looking for.

  Lev Grossman

  People, Lines, Fantasy

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• Maybe there's a sense that technology isn't necessarily the answer to a lot of our problems. Fantasy offers readers a less radically alienated world - a world where desires and feelings that normally are trapped inside your mind are made real in the form of magic.

  Lev Grossman

  Real, Technology, Feelings

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines.

  Lev Grossman

  Crossing The Line, Lines, Breaking Rules

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• I'm a fantasy writer. I don't do SF. This is important to me. If you're not clear on what genre you're in, everything gets muddled, and it's hard to know which rules you're breaking.

  Lev Grossman

  Important, Fantasy, Genre

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• As a writer I'm more drawn to villains who are just slightly mad.

  Lev Grossman

  Mad, Villain

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• 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.

  Lev Grossman

  Thinking, Long, Perfect

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• I have no doubt there are magician psychopaths, and magician serial killers. I doubt Brakebills admissions is very good at screening for those.

  Lev Grossman

  Doubt, Serial Killer, Killers

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me.

  Lev Grossman

  White, Important, Influence

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late.

  Lev Grossman

  Magic, Too Late, Stuff

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• When I was 35 I realized that I was still thinking a lot about what it would be like to go to Narnia. To really go - not just in a daydream, or in a children's book, but what it would actually feel like, physically, psychologically, every other way. The idea was haunting me.

  Lev Grossman

  Children, Book, Thinking

  "INTERVIEW: Lev Grossman on Writing ‘The Magician King’, Narnia and the Line Between SF and Fantasy". Interview with Andrew Liptak, www.sfsignal.com. August 17, 2011.

• Escapism has value, even if I don't know what its value is, exactly. Maybe it's just part of some healthy way that we deal with the world.

  Lev Grossman

  Healthy, World, Way

  Interview with Jason Heller, www.avclub.com. August 26, 2009.

• I always hated those fantasy books where, at the end, all the kids had to go home. At the end of a Narnia book, you always got shown the door. Same with The Wizard Of Oz and The Phantom Tollbooth. You get kicked out of your magic land. It's like, "By the way, here's your next surprise: You get to go home!" And the kids are all like, "Yay, we get to go home!" I never bought that. Did anybody buy that?

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Kids, Home

  Interview with Jason Heller, www.avclub.com. August 26, 2009.

• I loved fantasy, but I particularly loved the stories in which somebody got out of where they were and into somewhere better - as in the Chronicles Of Narnia, The Wizard Of Oz, The Phantom Tollbooth, the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon.

  Lev Grossman

  Dragons, Cartoon, Wizards

  Interview with Jason Heller, www.avclub.com. August 26, 2009.

• I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I think will subsequently be recognized as one of the first great novels of the 21st century.

  Lev Grossman

  Thinking, Firsts, Strange

  Interview with Jason Heller, www.avclub.com. August 26, 2009.

• It's wonderful to play around with fantasy, because there are an amazing number of as-yet-unbroken rules out there.

  Lev Grossman

  Numbers, Play, Unbroken

  Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, www.avclub.com. August 8, 2011.

• 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

  Moving, Want, Needs

  Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, www.avclub.com. August 8, 2011.

• It's very important, at least to me as a writer, that there be some rules on the table when I'm writing. Rules come from genres. You're writing in a genre, there are rules, which is great because then you can break the rules. That's when really exciting things happen.

  Lev Grossman

  Writing, Important, Tables

  Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, www.avclub.com. August 8, 2011.

• 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

  Asking, Way, Fantasy

  Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, www.avclub.com. August 8, 2011.

• My ultimate goal is to drive people back to the books, when I think of an adaptation.

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Thinking, People

  Interview with Todd VanDerWerff, www.avclub.com. August 8, 2011.