Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman
Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist, notably the author of the novels Warp, Codex, The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician's Land. He is a senior writer and book critic for TIME...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 June 1969
CountryUnited States of America
writing advice writing-advice
Don't take anyone's writing advice too seriously.
children book thinking
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.
loss lost mourn
It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost.
expectations way world
That was the thing about the world: it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be, it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect.
doubt serial-killer killers
I have no doubt there are magician psychopaths, and magician serial killers. I doubt Brakebills admissions is very good at screening for those.
annoyed enough should
By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.
other-worlds contentment obsessed
You're all so obsessed with other worlds, you're so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you've never bothered to figure out what's going on here!
littles ends humiliation
There is really no end to life's little humiliations.
pain fall feel-better
In a way fighting was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.
stars real ideas
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.
growing-up fun people
The problem with growing up is that once you're grown up, the people who aren't grown up aren't fun anymore.
soul looks shapes
It's an engrossing look at the way the flow of information shapes history-as well as a rare glimpse into the soul of the hardcore geek
easy turns
It turns out that there is something that can compete with free: easy.
writing special firsts
There's a special gut-check moment the first time you write a scene in which somebody casts a spell.