The real world is horrible. Lev Grossman More Quotes by Lev Grossman More Quotes From Lev Grossman My ultimate goal is to drive people back to the books, when I think of an adaptation. Lev Grossman book people thinking More than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way. Lev Grossman optimistic writing fiction I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college. Lev Grossman college littles long A big silvery janitor. Penny, this can’t be how the universe works.” “In the Order we call it ‘inverse profundity.’ We’ve observed it in any number of cases. The deeper you go into the cosmic mysteries, the less interesting everything gets. Lev Grossman numbers order interesting Magic is wild, dangerous stuff. You never realize how useful limitations are until it's much too late. Lev Grossman magic stuff too-late In our world no one ever knows what to do, and everyone's just as clueless and full of crap as everyone else, and you have to figure it all out by yourself. And even after you've figured it out and done it, you'll never know whether you were right or wrong. You'll never know if you put the ring in the right volcano, or if things might have gone better if you hadn't. Lev Grossman clueless our-world life 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. Lev Grossman different together people We have reached the point where ignorance and neglect are the best we can hope for in a ruler. Lev Grossman rulers neglect ignorance 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 aunt dark book 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 flying wings book 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 effort brain people Being brave was easy when you would rather die than give up. Lev Grossman giving-up brave easy As a teenager in Brooklyn Quentin had often imagined himself engaged in martial heroics, but after this he knew, as a cold immutable fact, that he would do anything necessary, sacrificing whatever or whomever he had to, to avoid risking exposure to physical violence. Shame never came into it. He embraced his new identity as a coward. He would run in the other direction. He would lie down and cry and put his arms over his head or play dead. It didn't matter what he had to do, he would do it and be glad. Lev Grossman teenager fear running I feel very conscious of my influences. T.H. White is very important for me. Lev Grossman influence important white It was strange to be naked in front of anybody. It was like that cold water out there in the bay: scary, you didn’t think you could stand it, but then you plunged in and pretty soon you got used to it. There was enough hiding in life. Sometimes you just wanted to show somebody your tits. Lev Grossman scary water thinking Magic: it was what happened when the mind met the world, and the mind won for a change. Lev Grossman magic mind world 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 funny-things self-esteem giving 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 book children thinking We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world. Lev Grossman real meaningful interesting 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. Lev Grossman knuckles internet book
