Lev Grossman
Hi! I'm the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Magicians trilogy—The Magicians, The Magician King, and The Magician’s Land—which was adapted as a TV show that ran for five seasons on Syfy.
I've also written two novels for children: The Silver Arrow, which the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, People magazine, Apple and Amazon all put on their best-of-the-year lists, and its sequel The Golden Swift. I do some journalist and screenwriting too.
I grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, the son of two English professors. My twin brother Austin is a writer and game designer, and my older sister Sheba is an artist. Sometimes I live in Brooklyn, New York, other times in Sydney, Australia, where my wife is from. I have three kids and a somehow steadily increasing number of cats.
“I have a little theory that I'd like to air here, if I may. What is it that you think makes you magicians?" More silence. Fogg was well into rhetorical-question territory now anyway. He spoke more softly. "Is it because you are intelligent? Is it because you are brave and good? Is is because you're special? Maybe. Who knows. But I'll tell you something: I think you're magicians because you're unhappy. A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. 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.”
“[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”
“Josh speculated about the hypothetical contents of an imaginary porn magazine for intelligent trees that would be entitled Enthouse.”
“It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost. ”
“The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it? ”
“We have lived too long. The great days are past. ”
“I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.”
“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.”
“A magician is strong because he feels pain. He feels the difference between what the world is and what he would make of it. Or what did you think that stuff in your chest was? A magician is strong because he hurts more than others. His wound is his strength. ”
“If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.”