Lev Grossman Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• Every year the literary press praises dozens if not hundreds of novels to the skies, asserting explicitly or implicitly that these books will probably not be suffering water damage in the basements of their authors' houses 20 years from now. But historically, anyway, that's not the way the novelistic ecology works.

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Years, Sky

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• There is really no end to life's little humiliations.

  Lev Grossman

  Littles, Ends, Humiliation

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.79, Penguin

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• She still had her bad days, no question, when the black dog of depression sniffed her out and settled its crushing weight on her chest and breathed its pungent dog breath in her face. On those days she called in sick to the IT shop where, most days, she untangled tangled networks for a song. On those days she pulled down the shades and ran dark for twelve or twenty-four or seventy-two hours, however long it took for the black dog to go on home to its dark master.

  Lev Grossman

  Crush, Dog, Song

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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

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• Quentin had an obsolete sailing ship that had been raised from the dead. He had psychotically effective swordsman and an enigmatic witch-queen. It wasn't the Fellowship of the Ring, but then again he wasn't trying to save the world from Sauron, he was trying to perform a tax audit on a bunch of hick islanders.

  Lev Grossman

  Queens, Sailing, Trying

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.353, Penguin

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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.

  Lev Grossman

  Moving, Want, Needs

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

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• I came from an anxious, overly intense East Coast academic family. That was the way of our tribe.

  Lev Grossman

  Way, Tribes, East

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• I'm happy to report that 'The New Press' is still in business to this day. But not thanks to me. I was a really bad publishing intern.

  Lev Grossman

  Thanks, Publishing, Stills

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• It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Like You, Terrible

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• My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only.

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Adults, Groups

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• Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings.

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Defined

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• His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling.

  Lev Grossman

  Personality, Whole, Jokes

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.89, Penguin

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• Do you promise to hate my parents as much as I do?" "Oh, absolutely," Quentin said. "Maybe even more.

  Lev Grossman

  Hate, Parent, Promise

  Lev Grossman (2009). “The Magicians: A Novel”, p.200, Penguin

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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.

  Lev Grossman

  Self Esteem, Funny Things, Giving

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.369, Penguin

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• Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.

  Lev Grossman

  Hero, Relief, Stories

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.434, Penguin

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• Genuinely social people never ceased to amaze him. Their brains seemed to generate an inexhaustible fund of things to say, naturally, with no effort, out of nothing at all.

  Lev Grossman

  People, Effort, Brain

  Lev Grossman (2011). “The Magician King: A Novel”, p.206, Penguin

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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

  Book, Wings, Flying

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.170, Penguin

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• When the oldest Chatwin, melancholy Martin, opens the cabinet of the grandfather clock that stands in a dark, narrow back hallway in his aunt’s house and slip through into Fillory...it’s like he’s opening the covers of a book, but a book that did what books always promised to do and never ac tually quite did: get you out, really out, of where you were and into something better.

  Lev Grossman

  Book, Dark, Aunt

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• We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler.

  Lev Grossman

  Ignorance, Neglect, Rulers

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.246, Penguin

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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.

  Lev Grossman

  Feelings, Done, Want

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.16, Penguin

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• The real problem with being around James was that he was always the hero. And what did that make you? Either the sidekick or the villain.

  Lev Grossman

  Real, Hero, Sidekicks

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.16, Penguin

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• Careful what you hunt, lest you catch it.

  Lev Grossman

  Careful, Hunts

  "The Magician King". Book by Lev Grossman, August 09, 2011.

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• Maybe this was one of those times when being a hero didn’t involve looking particularly brave. It was just doing what you should.

  Lev Grossman

  Hero, Brave, Should

  Lev Grossman (2015). “The Magicians Trilogy”, p.560, Penguin

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