A Lev Quotes & Sayings

He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn't think what else to do. He — Lev Grossman

Thought for the Week

"Refrain from littering the landscape
with unkind, cynical, mean-spirited words,
and you can return the world to a civility that was lost when human beings began deifying indiscriminant thoughts as if they were the truth."

Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev) — Leonard Perlmutter

Give a nerd enough time and a door he can close and he can figure out pretty much anything. — Lev Grossman

The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it? — Lev Grossman

shake him up. Get him out of his comfort zone so he could stop sneering at everybody else who was out of theirs. Get him thinking about something besides his own neuroses for a change. — Lev Grossman

It was funny how just when you thought you knew yourself through and through, you stumbled on a new kind of strength, a fresh reserve of power inside you that you never knew you had, and all at once you found yourself burning a little brighter and hotter than you ever had before. — Lev Grossman

We among all animals were cursed with a longing for somewhere better, somewhere that never existed and never would. — Lev Grossman

I never thought about doing a sequel when I was actually writing 'The Magicians.' I only ever considered it a standalone. — Lev Grossman

Everybody has a capacity for a happy life. All these talks about how difficult times we live in, that's just a clever way to justify fear and laziness. — Lev Landau

... and the rest of his life lay in front of him like a barren, meaningless postscript. — Lev Grossman

And at that moment, out of nowhere, Janet knew that she herself would never have children. Probably she'd known it for a while, but it was the first time she'd admitted it to herself. Let others breed. Let them, and God be with them. She would be the witness - she was tough enough to see everything break and not break herself. They also serve who fly around on hippogriffs and watch. — Lev Grossman

When he saw Julia, he searched himself for the old love he used to feel for her. It wasn't gone, but it was a dull, distant ache, still there but healed over
just the shrapnel they couldn't remove. — Lev Grossman

In those years, it was easier to win the Soviet Championship than a game against 'Iron Tigran'. — Lev Polugaevsky

It was hard not to envy her. A phantom toll-booth, or a chariot of fire, probably. Drawn by thestrals. — Lev Grossman

he'd learned the secret of a richer, more powerful adult rage. "It isn't how it was! It never will be again! They changed the rules on us, so as far as I'm concerned all bets are off." He cinched his belt tight. "If They apologized, if They showed — Lev Grossman

It didn't matter where you were, if you were in a room full of books you were at least halfway home. — Lev Grossman

I just completed a long car trip on a Sunday in August with two small children, which believe me is enough to convince you that Samuel Beckett was right about everything. — Lev Grossman

That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog. To tell you the truth I'm kind of glad he hit you. — Lev Grossman

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

Something must be going on deep in his subconscious, he thought, some kind of redecoration, refurbishment, reupholstering that required a lot of downtime - some shadowy application running in the background, performing unknown operations, consuming huge chunks of psychic ram. — 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

Needless to say, that meant that the Braekbills student body was quite the psychological menagerie. Carrying that much onboard cognitive processing power had a way of distorting your personality. And to actually want to work that hard, you had to be at least a little bit screwed up. — Lev Grossman

My name is Lev," said Lev.
"My name is Lydia," said the woman. And they shook hands, Lev's hand holding the scrunched-up kerchief and Lydia's hand rough with salt and smelling of egg, and then Lev asked, "What are you planning to do in En gland?" and Lydia said, "I have some interviews in London for jobs as a translator."
"That sounds promising."
"I hope so. I was a teacher of English at School 237 in Yarbl, so my language is very colloquial."
Lev looked at Lydia. It wasn't difficult to imagine her standing in front of a class and writing words on a blackboard. He said, "I wonder why you're leaving our country when you had a good job at School 237 in Yarbl?"
"Well," said Lydia, "I became very tired of the view from my window. Every day, summer and winter, I looked out at the schoolyard and the high fence and the apartment block beyond, and I began to imagine I would die seeing these things, and I didn't want this. I expect you understand what I mean? — Rose Tremain

Plato would hardly need to change a single word of his myth of the cave. Our knowledge would not be able to furnish an answer to his anxiety, his disquietude, his "premonitions." The world would remain for him, "in the light" of our "positive" sciences, what it was - a dark and sorrowful subterranean region - and we would seem to him like chained prisoners. Life would again have to make superhuman efforts, "as in a battle," to break open for himself a path through the truths created by the sciences which "dream of being but cannot see it in waking reality." [1] In brief, Aristotle would bless our knowledge while Plato would curse it. — Lev Shestov

The quietness of it was weird: real fights happened without a sound track. — Lev Grossman

My mom had gotten a Super 8 camera to make home movies with, and my brother and me got our hands on it and ran with it. — Lev Yilmaz

If this were some kind of entertainment, this would be roughly the point where Rupert said, "We don't have any more time, Professor, you must complete your research as soon as possible," but there was no great sense of urgency, no sense that it even mattered. It was just something that Rudi was interested in, for his own reasons. They could be working on this for years and still not understand it, and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference.
He said, "Look, Professor, a lot of effort went into getting you that information. We'd be grateful if you could make some kind of sense of it reasonably soon.
"There is one thing I can tell you right now," Lev said..."Whoever is running this thing, they're really interested in railways. — Dave Hutchinson

Until now, I've been a kind of binge-writer - I'll carve out five or six hours on a weekend day and make a large container of espresso and just bang out a lot of words. — Lev Grossman

But perfection is a nervy business, because the moment you spot the tiniest flaw it's ruined. — Lev Grossman

Quentin was thin and tall, though he habitually hunched his shoulders in a vain attempt to brace himself against whatever blow was coming from the heavens, and which would logically hit the tall people first. — Lev Grossman

Any fool can see you're a woman. Luckily, this is a school full of geniuses, so I don't think you'll have too much trouble. — Lev A.C. Rosen

Lev was a clink in my armor, a crack in my wall, — Belle Aurora

They went around the room telling stories about how they'd gotten here. No two were exactly the same, but there was always a certain family resemblance. Somebody went looking for a lost ball in an alley, or a stray goat in a drainage ditch, or fallowed an inexplicable extra cable in the high school computer room which led to a server closet that had never been there before. — Lev Grossman

In one huge leather-gloved fist Jollyby held up a large, madly kicking hare by its ears.
'Son of a bitch,' Dauntless said. 'He caught it.'
Dauntless was a talking horse. She just didn't talk much. — Lev Grossman

I don't recommend emulating the behavior of any of the characters contained within. They're all quite mad.
The truth is, I have no idea what I'm talking about.
Except about love. We all know a little about that. Or nothing at all. In any case, we're all on equal footing." (Author's Note) — Lev A.C. Rosen

He had a goatee that was maybe growing into something that was more than a goatee, which made him look like an angry barista at an indie coffee shop whose dreams of becoming a successful screenwriter were dwindling by the hour. — Lev Grossman

Worst away team ever," Josh said, wading up onto land. "Not a single redshirt. — Lev Grossman

He and Janet talked like this all the time. The Fillorians didn't really get it, they thought High King Eliot and Queen Janet hated each other, but the truth was that in Quentin's absence Janet had become his principal confidante. Eliot supposed it was partly because they both found real romantic intimacy elusive and kind of uninteresting, so usually neither of them had a serious boyfriend, and they had to turn to each other for intelligent companionship. — Lev Grossman

And if she liked and trusted the person who asked, she would add that yes, it was kind of a lot to deal with: her outward affect was bright and capable, and that was no illusion, but equally real was the yawning pit of exhaustion inside her. She just felt so tired sometimes. And because of everything her parents asked of her, she was ashamed of being tired. She could not, would not let the pit swallow her up, as much as she sometimes wanted it to. — Lev Grossman

Product of optimism and knowledge is a constant. — Lev Landau

The situation wasn't ideal. But it was what she had to work with, so she would work with it. She was a tough one, — Lev Grossman

If you care so much about it," she asks him, "then why did you run?"
He takes a moment before answering, shifting his weight and grimacing again. "Their work is good," he says. "It just isn't mine."
This baffles her. His motives - his hazy integrity. It was easy to dismiss Lev as "part of the problem" when she did not know him, but now it's not so easy. He's a paradox. This is a boy who almost blew himself to bits in an attempt to kill others, and yet he offered himself to the parts pirate in order to save Miracolina's life. How could someone go from having no respect for one's own existence to being willing to give himself as a sacrifice for someone he barely knows? It flies in the face of the truths that have defined Miracolina's life. The bad are bad, the good are good, and being caught in between is just an illusion. There is no gray. — Neal Shusterman

Analysis is a glittering opportunity for training: it is just here that capacity for work, perseverence and stamina are cultivated, and these qualities are, in truth, as necessary to a chess player as a marathon runner. — Lev Polugaevsky

This game could last for days if I keep going unconscious."
"Or it could be over very quickly."
Lev takes a deep breath and tries not to show any more fear than he has to. "Sounds exciting. I'm in. — Neal Shusterman

Suffering "buys" something, and this something possesses a certain value for all of us, for common consciousness; by suffering we buy the right to judge. — Lev Shestov

Never cook with a wine you wouldn't drink," he said. "Though I guess that presupposes that there is a wine I wouldn't drink. — Lev Grossman

In any case, we do not and cannot understand what magic is, or where it comes from, any more than a carpenter understands why a tree grows. He doesn't have to. He works with what he has. — Lev Grossman

So Connor stands there with secret anticipation each time there's a group of new arrivals, hoping beyond hope he'll find that self-righteous, self-important, pain-in-the-ass Lev still alive. — Neal Shusterman

Quentin hadn't planned on spending the rest of his afternoon - or morning, or whatever this was - taking a standardized test on an unknown subject, at an unknown educational institution, in some unknown alternate climatic zone where it was still summer. — Lev Grossman

A new thought happens and a new plant springs up. A feeling fades away and the plant dies. Some of the more common ones are always in bloom - fear, anger, happiness, love, envy. They're quite unruly, they grow like weeds. Certain basic mathematical ideas never go away either. But others are quite rare. Complex concepts, extreme or subtle emotions. Awe and wonder are harder to find than they once were. — Lev Grossman

She met a lot of people, and some people who weren't people. The more rural houses occasionally played host to minor demons and lesser fairies and local geo-specific nature spirits and elementals who lent street cred to the establishment in return for God knows what in the way of goods and services, she didn't ask. There was a certain romance to these beings; they seemed to embody the very promise of magic, which was to deliver unto her a world greater than the one into which she had been born. The moment when you walk into a room, and the guy playing pool has a pair of red leather wings sticking out of his back, and the chick smoking on the balcony has eyes of liquid golden fire - at that moment you think you'll never be sad or bored or lonely again. — Lev Grossman

My name is Asher Lev ... I am a traitor, an apostate, a self-hater, an inflicter of shame upon my family, my friends, my people; also, I am a mocker of ideas sacred to Christians, a blasphemous manipulator of modes and forms revered by Gentiles for two thousand years. — Chaim Potok

His crush went from exciting to depressing, as if he'd gone from the first blush of infatuation to the terminal nostalgia of a former lover without even the temporary relief of an actual relationship in between. — Lev Grossman

Free Trader Beowulf - you had to be at least forty and a recovering pen-and-paper role-playing-gamer to get the reference, but it was apt. Google it. — Lev Grossman

sometimes God wants your son. sometimes He'll settle for a ram. PouncySilverkitten: — Lev Grossman

But I'm sorry, where did you think you were, motherfucker? Connecticut? You're in a magic safe house in Bed-Stuy, borough of Brooklyn. There was a considerable Venn diagram overlap between people who lived in Bed-Stuy and people who had motherfucking guns. Fool. — Lev Grossman

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

Finally his father looks at him. "Are you satisfied now? Are you happy with the results of your actions?"

Lev has imagined this conversation between him and his father a hundred times. In each of those mental confrontations, Lev has always been the one making accusations, not the other way around. How dare he? How dare he? Lev wants to lash out, but he refuses to take the bait. He says nothing.

"Do you have any idea what you've put this family through?" his father says. "The shame? The ridicule?"

Lev can't maintain his silence. "Then maybe you shouldn't surround yourself with people as judgmental as you. — Neal Shusterman

I don't personally try to balance my work because I operate under the assumption that anyone reading or watching my stuff isn't having a particularly balanced day anyway. But negative attitudes just amuse me more than positive ones. — Lev Yilmaz

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

Spinsterhood didn't matter much to her; she was already married to science. — Lev A.C. Rosen

Life would again have to make superhuman efforts, "as in a battle," to break open for himself a path through the truths created by the sciences which "dream of being but cannot see it in waking reality. — Lev Shestov

Analysis, if it is really carried out with a complete concentration of his powers, forms and completes a chess player. — Lev Polugaevsky

In real life it was like they were playing some children's game. It was a little kid's idea of a magical object. Though what did you expect from a bunch of talking — Lev Grossman

Nothing made you feel more like a fucking sorcerer than aviating under your own power. Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers. — Lev Grossman

But where was he going to go, exactly? It was not considered the thing to look panicked or even especially concerned about graduation, but everything about the world after Brakebills felt dangerously vague and under-thought to Quentin. What was he going to do? What exactly? Every ambition he'd ever had in his life had been realized the day he was admitted to Brakebills, and he was struggling to formulate a new one with any kind of practical specificity. This wasn't Fillory, where there was some magical war to be fought. There was no Watcherwoman to be rooted out, no great evil to be vanquished, and without that everything else seemed so mundane and penny-ante. No one would come right out and say it, but the worldwide magical ecology was suffering from a serious imbalance: too many magicians, not enough monsters. — Lev Grossman

Art, science, love, inspiration, ideals - choose out all the words with which humanity is wont, or has been in the past, to be consoled or to be amused - Chekhov has only to touch them and they instantly wither and die. And Chekhov himself faded, withered and died before our eyes. Only his wonderful art did not die - his art to kill by a mere touch, a breath, a glance, everything whereby men live and wherein they take their pride. And in this art he was constantly perfecting himself, and he attained to a virtuosity beyond the reach of any of his rivals in European literature. — Lev Shestov

A Fillory without a god. It was a radical notion. But he thought about it, and it didn't seem like a terrible one. They would be on their own this time - the kings, the queens, the people, the animals, the spirits, the monsters. They'd have to decide what was right and just and fair for themselves. — Lev Grossman

Nothing a recovering addict likes more than a tale of how bad it had been in the old days, and how low a fellow addict had sunk. Let the one-downsmanship begin. — Lev Grossman

What the hell was he shooting at? You? Or the birds?'
'He fired off a few rounds at me, both from here and back there.' Lev turned to indicate the spot where the assailant stood. 'Then he was shooting at the owls.'
'The ones that attacked him.' There was open skepticism in Jonas's voice.
'I don't carry spare owl feathers in my pocket,' Levi said. — Christine Feehan

Beer might help with that," Quentin said. He felt punchy. "This could be the next clue. If it's a talking beer, I mean a talking bear, we could, you know, talk to it. — Lev Grossman

There is a safety mechanism in place [to ensure the perambulator doesn't turn back into a purse with a baby in it] : if anything weighing more than a pound and a half-about the weight of a three-volume novel-is in the carriage of the perambulator, it will not transform. — Lev A.C. Rosen

But walking along Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, in his black overcoat and his gray interview suit, Quentin knew he wasn't happy. Why not? He had painstakingly assembled all the ingredients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refused to come. He couldn't think what else to do. — Lev Grossman

The novel is a highly corrupt medium, after all - in the end the vast majority of them simply aren't that great, and are destined to be forgotten. — Lev Grossman

It's not a pretty world, Papa.'
'I've noticed,' my father said softly. — Chaim Potok

Then they pull onto Route 66, heading east into a world that's ripe for saving — Neal Shusterman

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. — Lev Grossman

My specialty as a collector is books that almost have value. When I love a book, I don't buy the first edition, because those have become incredibly expensive. But I might buy a beat-up copy of the second edition, third printing, which looks almost exactly the same as the first edition except that a couple of typos have been fixed. — Lev Grossman

Until sunlight came bleeding up over the horizon, like more acid blood oozing out of his sick ruptured heart, which felt - not that anybody cared - like a rotten drum of biohazardous waste at the very bottom of a landfill, leaching poison into the groundwater, enough poison to kill an entire suburb full of innocent and unsuspecting children. — Lev Grossman

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 did once work in a rare-books library, and I wrote a novel about a rare book. — Lev Grossman

A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I've just gotten in the habit of forgiving. — Lev Grossman

What a child can do today with assistance, she will be able to do by herself tomorrow. — Lev S. Vygotsky

Science is a way to pursue one's sense of inquiry at the expense of the State. — Lev Artsimovich

When he couldn't walk anymore he sailed, and when he couldn't sail anymore he was at the End of the World, where sat a dignified man in a dinner suit, dangling his long legs over the edge. He was patting his lapels and turning out his pockets and looking generally perplexed. "Bother," said the well-dressed man. "I've lost the Key to the World. If I don't wind it up and set its clockwork going again, the sun and moon and stars won't turn, and the world will be plunged into an eternal nighttime of miserable cold and darkness. Bother! — Lev Grossman

What kind of hellish punishment does Lev have planned if he needs the females' crazy magic moon water? Nothing Talon has ever heard of but the gryphon is a recluse and stories about him keep children from sneaking out alone; a terribly convoluted mixture of the rogue army attack on his eyrie, death, and the name Lev, one of the few survivors mean enough to live through it. — Elizabeth Munro

Lev looks at Risa, almost afraid to ask the obvious question. Finally he says, 'Uh ... why do we have a baby?'
'Ask him,' says Risa.
Stone-faced, Conner looks out of the window. 'They're looking for two boys and a girl. Having a baby will throw them off.'
'Great,' snaps Risa. 'Maybe we should all pick up a baby along the way. — Neal Shusterman

To live out childhood fantasies as a grown-up was to court and wed and bed disaster. — Lev Grossman

I'm taking a shower."
Oh, God. She was killing him. Making him want to laugh out loud. Where had his sense of self-preservation gone? He didn't feel emotion - that was far too dangerous. He shivered beneath the blankets, suddenly afraid for her. For himself.
"You're still cold. I should have thought to rub you down with some warm oil. Lexi makes it and I use it sometimes when I come in from a dive. It warms you up fast. Can you roll over, because I'm not rubbing your front."
"Why not?"
"If you want a massage, turn over. — Christine Feehan

He imagined another life for himself as one of these silent scholars, buried in his research like a guinea pig in its wood shavings, nibbling away steadily after some arcane piece of knowledge in the hope of making an addition, however imperceptible, to the collective pile. — Lev Grossman

As much as it was like anything, magic was like a language. And like a language, textbooks and teachers treated it as an orderly system for the purposes of teaching it, but in reality it was complex and chaotic and organic. It obeyed rules only to the extent that it felt like it, and there were almost as many special cases and one-time variations as there were rules. These Exceptions were indicated by rows of asterisks and daggers and other more obscure typographical fauna which invited the reader to peruse the many footnotes that cluttered up the margins of magical reference books like Talmudic commentary. — Lev Grossman

Everyone was pretending to be bored to tears, or maybe they actually were, but Quentin wasn't. He was unexpectedly happy, though he instinctively kept it a secret. In fact he was so fully of joy and relief he could barely breathe. Like a receding glacier the ordeal of the Beast had left behind a changed world, jumbled and scraped and raw, but the earth was finally putting up new green shoots again. — Lev Grossman

All of human literature could just be a user's guide to the multiverse! — Lev Grossman

It seems to me that the novel as a medium has a very low signal-to-noise ratio. By which I mean: there are a lot of novels published, but the vast majority of them don't represent major contributions to the medium. — Lev Grossman

The Deeper Magic always seemed to come up when Ember didn't feel like doing something, or needed to close a plot hole. — Lev Grossman

It is obvious that he has set himself an impossible task; slow and gradual transformations are possible, they even happen quite frequently, but they do not lead us to a new life; they only take us from one old life to another old life. The new life always makes itself known abruptly, without any approach or preparation, and it keeps its strange enigmatical character in the midst of events whose course has been determined by the old laws. — Lev Shestov

Sure, but real life's not actually like that," Quentin went on, fumbling after what he was sure was an important insight. "You don't just go on fun adventures for good causes and have happy endings. You're not going to be a character in a story, there's nobody arranging everything for you. The real world just doesn't work like that. — Lev Grossman

The centaurs regarded Quentin with pity nicely tempered by a near-total lack of interest. Also, they seemed to be constantly afraid that he was going to tip over. None — Lev Grossman

She swore she could prove it mathematically, but the calculations required were so involved that they would have required a computer the size of the universe, running for a length of time that would have taken them past the projected heat-death of the universe, to work them out. It was pretty much the definition of moot. — Lev Grossman

And on and on, and it all sounded completely, horribly plausible. Any one of a thousand options promised - basically guaranteed - a rich, fulfilling, challenging future for him. So why did Quentin feel like he was looking around frantically for another way out? Why was he still waiting for some grand adventure to come and find him? The professors Quentin talked to about it didn't seem concerned at all. They didn't get what the problem was. What should he do? Why, anything he wanted to! — Lev Grossman

He showed her a wonderful garden, where all the thoughts and feelings that had ever been thought and felt existed in the form of plants, blooming and green as they passed through people's minds and lived in their hearts, and then drying up and turning brown and crisp as they passed out of mind, sometimes to bloom again in another season, sometimes gone forever. It — Lev Grossman