I’ve stayed in houses that were in the country, and in England, but I’m still not sure that I’ve stayed in an English country house. Lev Grossman Read Quote
It’s no longer possible to simply build English country houses out of words, because they’ve already been so thoroughly described that all the applicable words have been used up, and one is forced to build them instead out of words recycled and scavenged from other descriptions of other country houses. Lev Grossman Read Quote
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 Read Quote
The year after I graduated college I had a job in a library. When people underlined passages in the library books, or made notes in the margins, the books were sent to me. I erased the lines and the notes. Yes, that was my job. Lev Grossman Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Oddly, the meanings of books are defined for me much more by their beginnings and middles than they are by their endings. Lev Grossman Read Quote
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 Read Quote
Book tours are excellent things, and one is lucky to get to go on one, but they have a way of leeching away one’s will to live. Lev Grossman Read Quote
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 Read Quote
