Though the funny thing about never being asked for anything is that after a while you start to feel like maybe you don’t have anything worth giving.

— Lev Grossman

Up until relatively recently, creating original characters from scratch wasn't a major part of an author's job description. When Virgil wrote The Aeneid, he didn't invent Aeneas; Aeneas was a minor character in Homer's Odyssey whose unauthorized further adventures Virgil decided to chronicle. Shakespeare didn't invent Hamlet and King Lear; he plucked them from historical and literary sources. Writers weren't the originators of the stories they told; they were just the temporary curators of them. Real creation was something the gods did. All that has changed. Today the way we think of creativity is dominated by Romantic notions of individual genius and originality, and late-capitalist concepts of intellectual property, under which artists are businesspeople whose creations are the commodities they have for sale.

— Lev Grossman

Well, why would you create something that had the power to hurt You? Or any of Your creatures? Why don't You help us? Do You have any idea how much we hurt? How much we suffer? I know all things, daughter. Well, okay, then know this. We human beings are unhappy all the time. We hate ourselves, and we hate each other, and sometimes we wish You of Whoever had never created us or this shit-ass world or any other shit-ass world. Do You realize that? So next time You might think about not doing such a half-assed job.

— Lev Grossman

We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.

— Lev Grossman

What makes you think what happened to you on Earth wasn't an adventure?

— Lev Grossman

Whether or not he was in it, whether he could see or touch it, he'd thought there would always be a Pillory out there somewhere. He loved knowing it was there. It anchored his sense of happiness, the way a distant stockpile of gold might underwrite the value of a paper bill.

— Lev Grossman

You didn’t get the quest you wanted, you got the one you could do.

— Lev Grossman

You don’t learn about yourself by being alone, you learn about yourself from other people.

— Lev Grossman

You just had to get some idea of what matters and what doesn't, and how much, and try not to be scared of the stuff that doesn't. Put it in perspective.

— Lev Grossman

You’re all so obsessed with other worlds, you’re so convinced that this one is crap and everywhere else is great, but you’ve never bothered to figure out what’s going on here!

— Lev Grossman