Quotes from Lev Grossman

Kids are not physical creatures, and they're not stupid. They know all about violence and power and raw emotions. What's really scary is when adults pretend that such things don't exist." (Grossman's review of The Hunger Games in "Time" magazine, Sept. 7, 2009)

Turns out you can cast some truly amazing shit in your dreams. But after you wake up it all seems kind of pointless, and nobody really wants to hear about it.

Of course I'm not sure," he said. "That's why you go. To find out if it's enough. You just have to be sure you want to find out.

They had a choice to make: go on, or go home.

being around him wasn't good for Quentin. He could feel himself regressing in the direction of an adolescent tantrum—it was like trying to talk to his parents. He lost all perspective on who he was and how far he'd come.

We haven't been doing that. It seems a little imperialist. I'm not sure it's in good taste.

Because, see, any amount of intimate there would be, you know—" Chelsea wrung her hands frantically. "Squick." "I don't know," Lucy said loyally, raising the flag for the backlash to the backlash. "I mean, come on, guys. He's only what—forty?" "He's thirty," Plum said. "Sorry. It's hard to tell with the, you know, the hair. I just meant that we're not in Humbert Humbert territory here.

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

A Black Madonna: the blackness of death, but also the blackness of good soil, dark with decay, which gives rise to life.

They were like two recovering alcoholics, hopped up on caffeine and Twelve Step gospel, telling each other how glad they were to be sober and then talking about nothing but drinking.

They were sitting on the floor in the library. It was too hot for chairs.

That's what makes you different from the rest of us, Quentin. You actually still believe in magic.

Couldn't she see that they were all dying, that everything was futile, that the only thing to do was to live and drink and fuck whatever and whomever while you still could?

Light was leaking out of the sky, and the fun was leaking out of the afternoon.

Oh, that was a droll little affair,' said Peters. 'Forget about it. You know what women are like? They're like those long, skinny blocks you get in Tetris, the ones made out of four blocks straight in a row. First when you need them you can't get any, then when you don't need them anymore they're fucking everywhere and you don't know what to do with them.

If he couldn't go back, he would just have to do things differently going forward. He felt how infinitely safer and more sound this attitude was. The trick was just not wanting anything. That was power. That was courage: the courage not to love anyone or hope for anything.

He just stared at his lap and waited for each successive second to impose itself on him in turn like an uninvited guest the way the previous one had.

In the student revolt in Paris they ripped up the cobblestones out of the streets,' Peters said as he walked around it. 'I guess they threw them at people or something. Maybe they were for the barricades. Anyway, there was all this nice yellow beach sand under them, so people started saying 'Under the Pavement, the Beach.' It turned into a big slogan in the sixties.' ¶ 'Them crazy French.

She was too tired to feel anything more, she wanted a book to do to her what books did: take away the world, slide it aside for a little bit, and let her please, please just be somewhere and somebody else.

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

We can't all be heroes. Then who would the heroes fight? It's a matter of numbers really. Just work out the sums.

I hadn't chosen my gift, and I hadn't chosen Alonzo either, but here we were. There was so much you didn't get to choose. The hard way was going to be very hard. It would be a long, long time before I felt safe and warm again.

Truth is a substance soluble in lichen vodka.

What about Josh?" he croaked. "Go ask him." "He's got another project." Janet rolled her eyes. "He thinks he can use the Neitherlands to get to Middle-earth. He honestly believes he's going to bone an elf." "I