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Michael Gruber

Michael Gruber is an author living in Seattle, Washington. He attended Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Miami. He worked as a cook, a marine biologist, a speech writer, a policy advisor for the Jimmy Carter White House, and a bureaucrat for the EPA before becoming a novelist.

He is generally acknowledged to be the ghostwriter of the popular Robert K. Tanenbaum series of Butch Karp novels starting with No Lesser Plea and ending with Resolved. After the partnership with Tanenbaum ended, Gruber began publishing his own novels under William Morrow and HarperCollins.

Gruber's "Jimmy Paz" trilogy, while critically acclaimed, did not sell at the same levels as the Butch Karp series in the United States. The Book of Air and Shadows became a national bestseller shortly after its release in March of 2007, however.

Series:

* Jimmy Paz


“You look at us and you see oppression; we see stability and harmony. You see corruption; we see ties of family, friendship, and mutual support. You see feudalism, we see mutual responsibility. You see the oppression of women, we see the defense of modesty.”
Michael Gruber
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“Farid, you are keeping a hawk; don't expect her to lay eggs like a chicken.”
Michael Gruber
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“When I got to the States and started going to an American high school, which I did for an extremely short time, I thought everyone around me was insane, the way they talked about their parents. I thought the parents were insane too, the way they handled their kids, like every request they made was a bargain they weren't sure would be kept. That little whiny tone at the end of every statement: "Be home by ten, okay?”
Michael Gruber
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“As a matter of fact I had a terribly traumatic childhood. But afterward I sort of reraised myself.”
Michael Gruber
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“But it turns out that people who are grounded and secure don't change much under stress. That's what being grounded means.”
Michael Gruber
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“Thus, although life is by and large unthrilling, when we do find ourselves in the sort of situation upon which thrillers dote we cannot really experience it, because our imaginations are occupied by the familiar tropes of popular fiction. And the result of this is a kind of dull bafflement, and the sense that whatever it is cannot really be happening. We actually think that phrase: this can’t be happening to me.”
Michael Gruber
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“Does it matter, when you read, if the person who wrote still lives?”
Michael Gruber
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“There are three kind of history. The first is what really happened and that is forever lost. The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort. The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened and that is 90 percent of the history in books.”
Michael Gruber
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“The problem with evil people is that they can see only evil in others. It is one of the worst curses of being evil, that you can no longer experience good. ”
Michael Gruber
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“Professors go batty too, perhaps more often than other people, although owing to their profession, their madness is less often remarked. ”
Michael Gruber
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“It's part of what we call the Shadow, all the dark parts of us we can't face. It's the thing that, if we don't deal with it, eventually poisons our lives.”
Michael Gruber
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“It is an animus, she decides, the representation of the Logos in the female, as the anima is the representation of Eros in the male. In its negative aspect it is opinionated, conventional, banal, self-righteous, argumentative . . . In its positive aspect, it conveys spirit, feistiness, the capacity for reflection and self-knowledge, the capacity to handle philosophical and religious ideas at the higher levels.”
Michael Gruber
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“There are life events that can destroy the personality, which is a lot more fragile than most people imagine, constructed as it is from bits provided by others in the most haphazard way. People can be torn down to the core, "shattered," as the expression goes, and then they seek sleep. And dreams, which provide the ground for the construction of a new and more integrated self. Providing there's a core, and providing they're willing to do the work.”
Michael Gruber
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“...envy is the one deadly sin that no American can ever admit to...”
Michael Gruber
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