Lev Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes I think I am fate's sword. She wields me cruelly." Quentin wondered what it was like to be so unselfconsciously melodramatic. Nice, probably. "Right. — 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

Would have to find something else, he thought mazily. Something new. Couldn't stay here anymore. Couldn't go back. Only forward. — Lev Grossman

There must still be some last invisible unbroken strand connecting them, something deeper than mourning. The wound had healed but the scar wouldn't fade, not quite. — Lev Grossman

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

First and foremost it is essential to understand the essence, the overall idea of any fashionable variation, and only then include it in one's repertoire. Otherwise the tactical trees will conceal from the player the strategic picture of the wood, in which his orientation will most likely be lost. — Lev Polugaevsky

Every year the literary press praises dozens if not hundreds of novels to the skies, asserting explicitly or implicitly that these books will probably not be suffering water damage in the basements of their authors' houses 20 years from now. But historically, anyway, that's not the way the novelistic ecology works. — 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

Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred. — Lev Grossman

His whole personality was like an elaborate joke that he never stopped telling. — Lev Grossman

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

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

Magic, Quentin discovered, wasn't romantic at all. It was grim and repetitive and deceptive. And he worked his ass off and became very good at it. — Lev Grossman

To know makes me grow
Not to know harms me
To forget frees me. — Edouard Leve

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

was so easy to ignore people when you understood how little power they really had over you - he — Lev Grossman

The line between outside and inside is fuzzier in fantasy. Maybe that's something people are looking for. — Lev Grossman

I killed the Google Alert I used to have on myself two years ago. I don't need any more information about myself. I get more than enough of that just by being me. — Lev Grossman

Maybe she was crazy, but she wasn't stupid. She'd seen Terminator 2. She wasn't going out like Sarah Connor. — Lev Grossman

Cowards hide [ ... ] but warriors lie and wait [ ... ] the only difference is whether you're motivated by fear or purpose. — Neal Shusterman

Shit was getting geological, yo. — 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

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

Cosmologists are often in error, but never in doubt — Lev Landau

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

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

But strange though it may seem, the more he judged, and the more he realized that men feared and acknowledged his right to judge, the more his innermost soul questioned man's right to judgment of any kind. — Lev Shestov

She started wearing black and listening to the Smiths and reading Camus — 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

Damn right! The time of your life! Gotta wrap up all those life events, all those parties, into one - birthdays, wedding, funeral." THen he turns to their father. "Very efficient, right, Dad?" ...
"Here's to my brother, Lev," Marcus says. "And to our parents! Who have always done the right thing. The appropriate thing. Who have always given generously to charity. Who have always given 10 percent of everything to our church. Hey, Mom - we're lucky you had ten kids instead of five, otherwise we'd end up having to cut Lev off at the waist! — Neal Shusterman

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

All this time, Lev ever realized what he needed. He did not need to be adored or pitied. He needed to be forgiven. Not by God, who is all forgiving. Not by people like Marcus and Pastor Dan, who would always stand by his side. He needed to be forgiven by an unforgiving world. — Neal Shusterman

Lev Vygotsky, the great Russian psychologist, used to speak of "thinking in pure meanings." I cannot decide whether this is nonsense or profound truth - it is the sort of reef I end up on when I think about thinking. — Oliver Sacks

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

But you couldn't mourn forever. Or you could, but as it turned out there were better things to do. — Lev Grossman

I love playing with the conventions of fantasy, and breaking rules, and crossing lines. — 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

It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost. — Lev Grossman

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

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

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

There's no getting away from yourself. Not even in Fillory. — Lev Grossman

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

He only had time to feel all the tenderness he had ever felt for her surge up in one infinitely concentrated instant - and to be surprised that it was all still there, moist and intact beneath the unsightly scorched layer of his anger... — Lev Grossman

The paradox of the English country house is that its state of permanent decline, the fact that its heyday is always behind it, is part of the seduction, just as it is part of the seduction of books in general. — 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

Supposedly I've got traces of an English accent, though I can't hear it. I must have inherited it from my mother, who's English, and then I think it was exacerbated by the fact that I live with an Australian. — Lev Grossman

Lev could not be fixed. And I didn't want to repair the broken part of him. He was perfectly imperfect, and I was his in heart and soul. — Belle Aurora

The pressure on language to deteriorate does not come merely from below, from the "democratic" lev-elers. It comes also from above, from the fancy jar-gonmongers, idle game players, fashionable coteries for second-rate intellectuals. — John Simon

No true hero ever believes that they are one. — Neal Shusterman

He was in the right place. He was living his best life. How many other people in the multiverse could say that? — Lev Grossman

He was aware for the first time of how quiet the city had gotten. After dark the streets and canals seemed to empty out. As if Venice felt less of an obligation to pretend to be part of this millennium at night, and had reverted to its medieval self again. — Lev Grossman

I never went back to my room. I took the Fung Wah bus from South Station. — 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

I got my first whiff of what big-time adult literature was all about when I was in 8th grade. I got it from Mark Linn-Baker. You know - the guy from 'Perfect Strangers.' — Lev Grossman

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

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

It is through others that we become ourselves. — Lev S. Vygotsky

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

You didn't get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do. — Lev Grossman

You cannot study magic. You cannot learn it. You must ingest it. Digest it. You must merge with it. And it with you. — Lev Grossman

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

Fatigue meant nothing when you actually wanted to suffer. — 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

Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings. — Lev Grossman

Maybe he was the anti-Santa, of the South Pole, and he was going to show them where the elves made lumps of coal for Anti-Christmas. — Lev Grossman

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

Honk!" he yelled. "Honk honk honk honk honk honk honk!"
His classmates agreed. — Lev Grossman

That was one thing about books: once you read them they couldn't be unread. — Lev Grossman

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

My book group has one rule: no books for adults. We read young adult fiction only. — Lev Grossman

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

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

Furthermore, as long as the world shall last, there will always be people who, either for the sake of peace or from an unquiet conscience, will build up sublime lies for their neighbours. And these people have always been and will always be the masters of human thought. — Lev Shestov

Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse. — 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

Love the ponytail," Connor says, pointing at his hair.
Lev shrugs. "It's just because my hair is so tatted. But maybe I'll keep it."
"Don't," Connor tells him. "I lied. I hate it. — Neal Shusterman

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

He wasn't surprised. He was used to this anticlimactic feeling, where by the time you've done all the work to get something you don't even want it anymore. — Lev Grossman

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

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

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

Now he had answers, but they weren't doing what answers were supposed to do: they weren't making things simpler or easier. They weren't helping. — Lev Grossman

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

The multiverse was his TGI Friday's. — Lev Grossman

Welcome to Facelessbook: an antisocial network. — 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

That was magic for you, right? The thing about magic, the real kind: it didn't make excuses, and it was never funny. — Lev Grossman