A Quote by Lev Grossman

I used to write in a local coffee shop, but there was another guy, another writer, who kept sitting in my favorite seat. I would show up, and he would be there, and I would get exiled to a couch or something, and it would throw me off my game.
Stevie Wonder used to come the ball games and they would have a guy sitting with him. And the guy would be holding on to his arm, telling him what's going on, and he would say, "Hey, the big chocolate guy just put down a thunder dunk. The chocolate guy with another monster dunk." And Stevie Wonder actually gave me the nickname Chocolate Thunder.
I was always a guy that would study for three hours and barely get an A on the test and you would have another guy next to me who would study for maybe 30 minutes and ace it.
Still, I kept writing. I had no guarantee that I would someday win awards for writing. Heavens, the only person during that time who seemed to think I could write something worth publishing was my loyal husband. But I always remembered the professor from graduate school who urged me to write and who recommended me for that first writing assignment in 1964. When I protested to Sara Little that I didn't want to add another mediocre writer to the world, she gently reminded me that if I didn't dare mediocrity, I would never write anything at all.
I remember being 12 or 13 and listening to 'Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp' by OC Smith. It reminds me of holidays in Cornwall, driving in a big estate car, me and my brother sleeping in the back, we would get up early and my dad would put pillows on the back seat and we would lay on the back seat while we drove off on holiday.
What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself - and thus make yourself indispensable.
What another would have done as well as you, do not do it. What another would have said as well as you, do not say it; what another would have written as well, do not write it. Be faithful to that which exists nowhere but in yourself-and thus make yourself indispensable.
I would go for the biggest guy on the team, dump the puck in. I would chase after it because I was very fast. If I wanted to get a big hit, I would have to leap into the guy. The guy would be maybe a 6-3 defenseman, 220, I would leap into this guy and plow him over. He would just fall to the ground. That was my thing.
The weirdest thing to me is that magazines would never do this for their writers. They would never hire a writer who writes for another magazine; they want to have their own stable of writers. Newsweek would never hire a TIME writer, and TIME would never hire a Newsweek writer - but they would both hire the same photographer to shoot a cover for them.
I used to throw on soundtracks, and orchestral stuff would be the only thing I could write to, maybe 'Dead Can Dance' or 'Cocteau Twins' or something. Mostly, it was movies scores that would kind of inspire me.
I had a stormy graduate career, where every week we would have a shouting match. I kept doing deals where I would say, 'Okay, let me do neural nets for another six months, and I will prove to you they work.' At the end of the six months, I would say, 'Yeah, but I am almost there. Give me another six months.'
It's no accident that Julia Child appeared on public television - or educational television, as it used to be called. On a commercial network, a program that actually inspired viewers to get off the couch and spend an hour cooking a meal would be a commercial disaster, for it would mean they were turning off the television to do something else.
I'm going out with these old guys. One guy gave me a hickey and left his teeth in my neck. Another man, we were having a perfectly lovely dinner; he looked up and me and went: You're not my wife! Another guy died during dinner. I had to go in his pocket to get the American Express card. Then you wonder: What would he tip? Another guy said: I want you to meet my family, and took me to the cemetery.
I used to go into pubs and people would want to pick a fight with me. I would hear a group of girls say: 'Oh look, there's Pat Cash.' And then one of them would come up to me and say, 'You think you're so good,' and throw a drink in my face. That kind of reaction from people was a bit of a shock initially, and you don't ever really get used to it.
At this time, the only thing that would get me back in the ring is something that would positively impact those in need. If selling out another major event would allow me to bring a ship full of supplies to hand out to those in need, I'd say that would be very significant.
I promised Todd [Willingham] that I would attend the execution. ... It was impossible for me to go. I was incapable of that sort of travel. Sitting in a chair that long, driving to Huntsville just wouldn't have happened. ... I'm sure I would have been there. It's something I know. I would not have denied him that, but the accident kept me from being there. At some level, the universe was giving me the excuse for not being there. ... The universe was like, "Oh, you don't have to watch this." ... It would have been a horrible thing, but I'm sure I would have gone.
Sometimes my boyfriend would write the lyrics and I would write the melody, and other times I would start from scratch. Or sometimes I would take a local poem and put that to music.
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