Lev Grossman Quotes

I'll tell you one thing, it's a cruel, cruel world.

The real world is far more hellish for all us than any fictional representation of it.

It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf.

Sometimes, I can myself be frustrated by books that seem to me to be insufficiently realistic about the world's potential for just being totally a randomly bad place.

Humanity either makes, or breeds, or tolerates all its afflictions.

There are people who are suffering beyond description. They are innocent people, they didn't bring this upon themselves. They are the victims of the sins of other people. And while it's hard to see, it's important to understand that these people exist.

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows.

The world is a heartbreaking place, without any question.

Life is painful, nasty and short... in my case it has only been painful and nasty.

While we yearn for peace, we live in a world burdened with hunger, pain, anguish, loneliness, sickness, and sorrow.

Today's world is very cruel.

Non-fictionalised accounts of horrific accidents, bereavement, and the outrages of officialdom tend to move us deeply.

The world can be very cruel.

I've seen the hell these people go through.

The problem of suffering is: why is there the suffering we know?

I sleep in peace, even if only in the company of lice, behind bars. The same could not be said of my incarcerators though they sleep in warm beds, next to their wives, in their homes.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

Oh eyes, no eyes, but fountains fraught with tears; O life, no life, but lively form of death; Oh world, no world, but mass of public wrongs.

Where is there beauty when you see deprivation and starvation?

We hate our squalor.

We don't live in the Garden. We live far from Eden. Every life is full of heartaches. Every life, frankly, is unspeakably sad.

There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.

Ignorance, filth, and poverty are the missionaries of crime.

One man’s exile is but a drop in the sea of human misery

Life is hard. Not great. Kind of tragic.