Jonathan Lethem Quotes

Quotes about:

• I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Bored, Fiction

  46 Copy quote

• Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Names, Shut Up, Someday

  Jonathan Lethem (2011). “Motherless Brooklyn: A Novel”, p.212, Vintage

  26 Copy quote

• I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Moving, World, Want

  16 Copy quote

• The level at which my OCD enters my writing process isn't that I slap the keyboard - it's more along the lines of a compulsive need to swap syllables around, rework words and sentences - I revise for the pleasure and satisfaction of it, rather than out of a sense of duty.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Ocd, Pleasure

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  4 Copy quote

• All paths lead nowhere; choose one with heart...

  Jonathan Lethem

  Heart, Path

  "For Novelist Jonathan Lethem, Radicalism Runs In The Family". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. August 8, 2014.

  7 Copy quote

• When people call something "original," 9 out of 10 times they just don't know the references or original sources involved.

  Jonathan Lethem

  People, Source, Knows

  4 Copy quote

• Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Couple, People, Guy

  12 Copy quote

• There's something about the rhythms of language that correspond to the rhythms of our own bodies.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Body, Language, Rhythm

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Art, Order, Focus

  Source: www.believermag.com

  8 Copy quote

• Life is fundamentally up for grabs

  Jonathan Lethem

  Life Is

  4 Copy quote

• There's never any percentage in being ahead of your time.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Percentages

  Jonathan Lethem (2014). “Amnesia Moon”, p.121, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• I've always felt that the writing I responded to most - the novels and stories that compelled me, that felt like they described the world I live in, with all of its subjectivity, irrationality, and paradox, were those which made free use of myths and symbols, fantastic occurences, florid metaphors, linguistic experiments, etcetera - to depict the experiences of relatively 'realistic' characters - on the level of their emotions and psychology, rather than in terms of what kinds of lives they led or what kind of events they experience.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Character, Psychology

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

  7 Copy quote

• I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Confused, Boundaries, Genre

  8 Copy quote

• Reading and writing are the same thing; it's just one's the more active and the other's the more passive. They flow into each other.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Reading, Writing, Flow

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

• Insomnia is a variant of Tourette's--the waking brain races, sampling the world after the world has turned away, touching it everywhere, refusing to settle, to join the collective nod. The insomniac brain is a sort of conspiracy theorist as well, believing too much in its own paranoiac importance--as though if it were to blink, then doze, the world might be overrun by some encroaching calamity, which its obsessive musings are somehow fending off.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Believe, Insomnia, Race

  FaceBook post by Jonathan Lethem from Jul 01, 2016

  15 Copy quote

• Poetry is supposed to be musical. But people don't understand prose. They're so used to reading journalism - clunky, functional sentences that convey factual information - facts, more than just the surfaces of things.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Reading, People, Musical

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I'm a firm believer that there are no rules in art. Every trajectory is different.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Art, Different, Firm

  Source: www.believermag.com

  8 Copy quote

• Music still sort of hangs up there in the sky for me as this thing that moves me so much, but I can't really make it. It's like a car I can't drive.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Moving, Sky, Car

  Interview with Christopher Bahn, film.avclub.com. April 5, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• Discomfort is very much part of my master plan.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Masters, Plans, Discomfort

  7 Copy quote

• I don't know why the world has changed so much that writers are now expected to appear in public and talk about their work. It's something I find very difficult. And yet, one does have some sense of responsibility towards one's publishers, to the people trying to sell the book.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Book, Responsibility, People

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

• I guess they needed a maze in Japan, where everything's neat and tidy. In America everybody's already wandering around lost.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Neat And Tidy, Japan, America

  Jonathan Lethem (2014). “Amnesia Moon”, p.122, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• Yet I'm making a book and I'm going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won't believe in it and it won't be real to me until there's a finished book I can hold.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Real, Believe, Book

  Interview with Peter Andrey Smith, www.believermag.com. May 2012.

  8 Copy quote

• What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?

  Jonathan Lethem

  Boys, Scary, Black

  Jonathan Lethem (2004). “The Fortress of Solitude”, p.490, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

• Nerds are just deep, and neurotic, fans. Needy fans. We're all nerds, on one subject or another.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Nerd, Fans, Needy

  "‘No, I don’t paint anymore’ – Bookmunch Classic Interview: Jonathan Lethem". Interview with Peter Wild, bookmunch.wordpress.com. July 1, 2004.

  7 Copy quote

• I'm gregarious with writers and never with manuscripts . . . I [like to] create the illusion of seamless perfection, so I alone know the flawed homely process along the way.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Perfection, Way, Illusion

  5 Copy quote

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