It's a great thing when you feel that you recognize yourself, deeply and movingly, in a work of literature. — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it. — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
It didn’t matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home. — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings. — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
Being a writer can be isolating. It's good to be among readers and booksellers. — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
Read everything. If you haven't read everything, you'll never be able to write anything. — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all - in the end the vast majority of them simply aren't that great,… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
When I left college I thought - based on a staggeringly inadequate understanding of how the world worked - that I might… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
How often have I met and disliked writers whose books I love; and conversely, hated the books and then wound up liking… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
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.… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I love rare books. Not that I own a lot of them, mind you. You couldn't quite call me a rare-book collector.… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I read a lot of literary theory when I was in graduate school, especially about novels, and the best book I ever… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I got my first whiff of what big-time adult literature was all about when I was in 8th grade. I got it… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
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… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
Which is the healthier kind of literary diversity: an un-gate-kept self-published book world, run substantially through Amazon? Or our current book world,… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
Young minds - young brains - need stories and ideas like the ones in those [censored and banned] books in order to… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“The librarian thought the problem was just that the right books weren’t breeding with each other and proposed a forced mating program.… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“When he graduated he’d thought life was going to be like a novel, starring him on his own personal hero’s journey, and… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
Maybe there's a sense that technology isn't necessarily the answer to a lot of our problems. Fantasy offers readers a less radically… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“Drinks were a lot like books, really: it didn’t matter where you were, the contents of a vodka tonic were always more… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“Literature interprets the world, but it's also shaped by that world, and we're living through one of the greatest economic and technological… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“Up until relatively recently, creating original characters from scratch wasn't a major part of an author's job description. When Virgil wrote The… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“There are any number of reasons to want novels to survive. The way [Jonathan] Franzen thinks about it is that books can… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“Personally, I think the "Potter" books have too many adverbs and not enough sex.” — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I think every fantasy reader secretly believes they know how magic works. — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
Book tours are excellent things, and one is lucky to get to go on one, but they have a way of leeching… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“That was one thing about books: once you read them they couldn’t be unread.” — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
The main advantage of being a reviewer is that you read a lot. A lot of books get sent to you, and… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I ought to at least be able to read literature in French. I went to an enlightened grade school that started us… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I think will subsequently be recognized as one of the first great… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
The year after I graduated college I had a job in a library. When people underlined passages in the library books, or… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
A lot of young-adult authors, great ones, have tried their hands at literary fiction, and not a lot of them have succeeded.… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I don't know if I've ever derived such an immediate sense of calm and well-being from any book as I did from… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
My specialty as a collector is books that almost have value. When I love a book, I don't buy the first edition,… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I went to college at Harvard, then did three years of graduate school at Yale. At both places I studied comparative literature.… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
Every year the literary press praises dozens if not hundreds of novels to the skies, asserting explicitly or implicitly that these books… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
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… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“He was going to sign the papers and he was going to be a motherfucking magician.” — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“Being brave was easy when you would rather die than give up. Fatigue meant nothing when you actually wanted to suffer.” — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“He wasn't in a safe little story where wrongs were automatically righted; he was still in the real world, where bad bitter things happened… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
I love rare books. Not that I own a lot of them, mind you. You couldn't quite call me a rare-book collector. But I… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
About as close you can get to the perfect cerebral thriller: searingly smart, ridiculously funny, and fast as hell... I defy anybody to read… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“It's true," Eliot said. "Statistically, historically, and however else you want to look at it, you are almost never right. A monkey making life… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
“God, I hope we don’t have to use that,” was all he said out loud. “Oh, come on, Quentina. We’re not looking for trouble.… — Lev Grossman Copy Share Image
![“Young minds - young brains - need stories and ideas like the ones in those [censored and banned] books in order to grow. They need ideas that you disagree with. They need ideas that I disagree with. Or they'll never be able to figure out what ideas they believe in.” quote by Lev Grossman](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/392/lev-grossman-747_able_young-minds-young-brains-need-stories-an_716251.jpg)
![“There are any number of reasons to want novels to survive. The way [Jonathan] Franzen thinks about it is that books can do things, socially useful things, that other media can't. He cites -- as one does -- the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his idea of busyness: that state of constant…” quote by Lev Grossman](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/57c/lev-grossman-747_books_there-are-any-number-of-reasons-to-want_1029930.jpg)
