Lev Grossman Quotes

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Lev Grossman

Profession : Novelist

Birth : June 26, 1969

One already feels like an anachronism, writing novels in the age of what-ever-this-is-the-age-of, but touring to promote them feels doubly anachronistic. The marketplace is showing an increasing intolerance for the time-honored practice of printing information on paper and shipping it around the country.

Lev Grossman

When it comes to true humility in the face of history, nothing beats complete silence.

Lev Grossman

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.'

Lev Grossman

Becoming an author changes your attitude too. Once you see where books come from, and how they're made, they never seem quite as sacred again.

Lev Grossman

I've drunk Amazon's free Diet Coke. Nothing makes more sense to me than a company trying to make bookselling into a profitable business. I'm not anti-Amazon, and I'm not pro-publishers either. I'm pro-books.

Lev Grossman

I've read plenty of J.G. Ballard, but I'm not really a Ballardian. I've met Ballardians, and I know when I can't compete. I like Ballard in his relatively unchallenging apocalyptic mode: 'Vermilion Sands,' 'The Drowned World,' 'The Burning World,' 'The Crystal World.'

Lev Grossman

Even though I have spent literally years of my life trying to learn another language, any other language - and even though I have in the past claimed in several key professional contexts that I speak other languages - I am in fact still trapped inside the bubble of English.

Lev Grossman

I ought to at least be able to read literature in French. I went to an enlightened grade school that started us on French in fifth grade, which meant that by the time I graduated high school I had been at it for eight years.

Lev Grossman

When I got to college I simply decided that I could speak French, because I just could not spend any more time in French classes. I went ahead and took courses on French literature, some of them even taught in French.

Lev Grossman

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

Lev Grossman

How often have I met and disliked writers whose books I love; and conversely, hated the books and then wound up liking the writer? Too often.

Lev Grossman

Hating a book is not unlike hating a person; in fact it's tempting to just go ahead and hate the author personally, by proxy, qua human being, except that I know that would be a mistake.

Lev Grossman

It's not really possible to open 'The Casual Vacancy' without a lot of expectations both high and low crashing around in your brain and distorting your vision. There's no point pretending they're not there.

Lev Grossman

I have spent many, many hours reading J.K. Rowling's work. I am a known 'Harry Potter' fan.

Lev Grossman

A lot of young-adult authors, great ones, have tried their hands at literary fiction, and not a lot of them have succeeded. Not even Roald Dahl could switch-hit, and not for lack of trying.

Lev Grossman

What surprised me about 'The Casual Vacancy' was not just how good it was, but the particular way in which it was good.

Lev Grossman

When I left college I thought - based on a staggeringly inadequate understanding of how the world worked - that I might like to go into book publishing.

Lev Grossman

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

I guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy books.

Lev Grossman

I mean, when you're tired of book reviews, you're tired of life.

Lev Grossman