Quotessence
Home / Authors / Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllBookFeelsIfsWayWorldMagicFantasyPeopleThe MagiciansWriting

Famous Lev Grossman Quotes

“I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is is because you're special? Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. Most people carry that pain around inside them their whole lives, until they kill the pain by other means, or until it kills them. But you, my friends, you found another way: a way to use the pain. To burn it as fuel, for light and warmth. You have learned to break the world that has tried to break you.”

LightPainMagicBraveryIntelligenceFuelUnhappinessWarmthMagiciansRhetorical QuestionsBrakebills
Book:The Magicians
Create image

“The idea of some kind of objectively constant, universal literary value is seductive. It feels real. It feels like a stone cold fact that In Search of Lost Time, by Marcel Proust, is better than A Shore Thing, by Snooki. And it may be; Snooki definitely has more one-star reviews on Amazon. But if literary value is real, no one seems to be able to locate it or define it very well. We're increasingly adrift in a grey void of aesthetic relativism.”

IfsFeelsWellsKindMayIdeasRealFactsSeemsAbleValuesLostStarsColdStonesUniversalConstantReviewsShoreVoidAestheticGreyAmazonSeductiveRelativismProustLost TimeAdriftStone ColdSnooki
Author:Lev Grossman
Create image

“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?”

WayBookEndsHomeKidsNextFantasyDoorsMagicLandSurpriseHatedWizardsPhantomsNarniaFantasy BooksPhantom TollboothYay
Author:Lev Grossman
Create image

“Nothing is wrong with you. You're not different. Everybody feels as bad as you do: this is just what writing a novel feels like. To write a novel is to come in contact with raw, primal feelings, hopes and longings and psychic wounds, and try to make a big public word-sculpture out of them, and that is a crazy hard thing to do.”

FeelsWritingTryingDifferentHardFeelingsBigsNovelCrazyLongingWoundsContactThings To DoPsychicsSculpturePrimalHard Things
Author:Lev Grossman
Create image