Lev Grossman Quotes
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Being a writer can be isolating. It's good to be among readers and booksellers.
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More than fantasy or even science fiction, Ray Bradbury wrote horror, and like so many great horror writers he was himself utterly without fear, of anything. He wasn't afraid of looking uncool - he wasn't scared to openly love innocence, or to be optimistic, or to write sentimentally when he felt that way.
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I've only read three books by Stephen King. When I was 10 I read 'The Long Walk,' one of his pseudonymous Bachman books. In my early 20s, while trapped on a family vacation, I read 'The Dark Half,' which taught me a word I have never forgotten: psychopomp. Now I have read '11/22/63.'
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I think every fantasy reader secretly believes they know how magic works.
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Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings.
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I've read plenty of J.G. Ballard, but I'm not really a Ballardian. I've met Ballardians, and I know when I can't compete. I like Ballard in his relatively unchallenging apocalyptic mode: 'Vermilion Sands,' 'The Drowned World,' 'The Burning World,' 'The Crystal World.'
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People - me included - want to get excited about books. Good books are a good thing.
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It's a terrible thing for a book, when you feel like you're supposed to like it.
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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.
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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.
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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.