Lev Grossman Quotes
It's not really possible to open 'The Casual Vacancy' without a lot of expectations both high and low crashing around in your brain and distorting your vision. There's no point pretending they're not there.

Quotes to Explore
-
America tends to worship the modest talent because it doesn't put us in an uncomfortable position vis-a-vis the artist.
-
I converse with my dog through ESP.
-
I do always have a wall up. But I feel by doing it, I keep myself safe.
-
Justice is revenge.
-
After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others.
-
It angers me when sustainability gets used as a buzz word. For 90 percent of the world, sustainability is a matter of survival.
-
The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.
-
I'm not Mr. Mom, but there's just certain things I won't say anymore.
-
I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.
-
The first time I worked with colors was by making these mosaics of Pantone swatches. They end up being very large pictures, and I photographed with a very large camera - an 8x10 camera. So you can see the surface of every single swatch - like in this picture of Chuck Close. And you have to walk very far to be able to see it.
-
Italian was my first foreign language. I speak it better than English.
-
I enjoy stand-up because it has the biggest reward: instant gratification. You can hear the people laughing.
-
We grew up listening to music like that: we grew up on the snap music, grew up off the trap music, grew up on all the South sound.
-
You can't get a cup of tea big enough or a book long enough to suit me.
-
I remember when I first met Katherine Bigelow for 'Zero Dark Thirty' – actually, we met for another movie, and that never got made, and then she called me and invited me to 'Zero Dark Thirty'.
-
These days we're all hyper-aware of the canonical way in which stories are supposed to play out - people are taught all about three-act scripting and where to put the reversal and all of that - and I think we can do more interesting narratives.
-
The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.
-
There is a kind of misconception that Asian-Americans are not as American as European-Americans.
-
Comedy is like music. You have to know the key and you have to find players with good chops.
-
If the Administration does nothing, high gasoline prices will continue to increasingly burden our economy, taking millions of dollars out of the hands of families and putting it straight into the pockets of OPEC.
-
In prose, you have a lot more room for digression, for very meaty kinds of dialogues. In graphic novels, you're writing haiku-length dialogue. Your job is to be efficient, to get out of the way of the art.
-
Every painful consequence of sin is a part of the punishment meted out for sin.
-
As an artist, you tend to gravitate to the opposite. I know, when I finish a song or an album, I'm interested in doing something completely new. It doesn't always happen, but that's the idea. My poor fans - I don't know if they love that or hate that.
-
It's not really possible to open 'The Casual Vacancy' without a lot of expectations both high and low crashing around in your brain and distorting your vision. There's no point pretending they're not there.