Jonathan Lethem Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• I'm learning to hate the sound of my own voice.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Hate, Voice, Sound

  Jonathan Lethem (1997). “As She Climbed Across the Table”, Doubleday Books

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• It's now expected of me that I will defy expectation, so I really generally seem to be free to write what I want.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Expectations, Want

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• How often had that hydrant even been opened? Did you jet water through a car window, what, twice at best? Summer burned just a few afternoons long, in the end. As for flying, Dose never even glanced at the sky. Flying was a summer within a summer, a whim. So why think of it at all?

  Jonathan Lethem

  Summer, Thinking, Sky

  Jonathan Lethem (2003). “The Fortress of Solitude”, Large Print Press

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• When I write lyrics, I really do go into an automatic folk appropriation mode... I see the vernacular register of 20th century song as being a bunch of forms to adapt and reconfigure.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Song, Writing, Century

  "Music, Influence, and "Deeply Unnecessary" Art". Interview with Ben Arthur, logger.believermag.com. March 17, 2015.

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• When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Hippie, Artist, Rights

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• ...Don't rupture another's illusion unless you're positive the alternative you offer is more worthwhile than that from which you're wrenching them. Interrogate your solipsism: Does it offer any better a home than the delusions you're reaching to shatter?

  Jonathan Lethem

  Home, Doe, Alternatives

  Jonathan Lethem (2010). “Chronic City”, p.341, Faber & Faber

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• You could grow up in the city where history was made and still miss it all.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Growing Up, Cities, Missing

  Jonathan Lethem (2004). “The Fortress of Solitude”, p.259, Vintage

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• As much as I care about historical context - I'm very eager to read a really great historical account.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Historical, Care, Really Great

  "Fear of Music". Interview with Jayson Greene, pitchfork.com. May 29, 2012.

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• Those promises we make to ourselves when we are younger, about how we mean to conduct our adult lives, can it be true we break every last one of them? All except for one, I suppose: the promise to judge ourselves by those standards, the promise to remember the child who would be so appalled by compromise, the child who would find jadedness wicked.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Children, Mean, Judging

  Jonathan Lethem, Tom Perrotta, Lester Bangs, Aimee Bender, Amanda Davis (2007). “Lit Riffs”, p.49, Simon and Schuster

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• The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Art, Rights, Diversity

  "Straight outta Brooklyn" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. December 13, 2003.

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• What's lucky about my career in general is that I stumbled into what every writer most wants. Not repeating myself and doing strange things has become my trademark.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Careers, Lucky, Want

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• My writing life is pretty simple - I try to work every day, almost always in the mornings - and I can only write fiction effectively for about three or at the most four hours. No big mysteries, I just sit down and try to advance the cause a little bit every day.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Morning, Writing, Simple

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• As a child growing up in pre-gentrification Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, I went everywhere by bicycle. My bike was in many ways the key to my neighborhood, which, at the time, was Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. This was in the 60s and 70s, before all the white people and restaurants. I really can't underscore boldly enough the fact that I grew up in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, before it was gentrified. You could get mugged!

  Jonathan Lethem

  Growing Up, Children, White

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• I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Book, Good Luck, Way

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• I've never related to the work geek at all-it sounds much more horrible than nerd. Like a freak biting a chicken's head off in a sideshow.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Nerd, Biting, Sound

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• I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Hate, Writing, Feelings

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Addiction, Trying, Subculture

  "Talk time: Jonathan Lethem". Interview with Hamish Mackintosh, www.theguardian.com. January 28, 2004.

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• It was only as I wrote about fear that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Feelings, Path, Access

  "Straight outta Brooklyn" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. December 13, 2003.

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• I plan less and less. It's a great benefit of writing lots, that you get good at holding long narratives in your head like a virtual space.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Space, Long

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• I've discovered that like every writer, I'm helpless MYSELF - and that means I find myself unconsciously or semi-consciously repeating motifs and themes and even using certain words or images recurrently in my work, no matter how much I think I'm starting fresh. But I've always admired artists who made a specific sport of trying to visit different kinds of genres or mediums or modes - not just 'western' or 'detective', but comedy/tragedy, epic and miniature, traditional/experimental.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Sports, Mean, Epic

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• You don’t have the slightest idea of what it means to write a scene and a character in the English language, with images and words chock full of received meaning.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Character, Mean

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• Writing is a private discipline, in a field of companions.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Discipline, Fields

  FaceBook post by Jonathan Lethem from Aug 18, 2014

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• I’ve always been uninterested in boundaries or quarantines between tastes and types, between mediums and genres.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Quarantine, Taste, Boundaries

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• I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Skulls, Bears

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• Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I'm a carnival barker, an auctioneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker in tongues, a senator drunk on filibuster. I've got Tourette's. My mouth won't quit, though mostly I whisper or subvocalize like I'm reading aloud, my Adam's apple bobbing, jaw muscle beating like a miniature heart under my cheek, the noise suppressed, the words escaping silently, mere ghosts of themselves, husks of empty breath and tone.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Reading, Heart, Artist

  Jonathan Lethem (2011). “Motherless Brooklyn: A Novel”, p.11, Vintage

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