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 keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow I keep myself sane.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Moving, Book, Writing

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

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• Writing is physical for me. I always have the sense that the words are coming out of my body, not just my mind.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Mind, Body

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 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

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• 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

• Life is fundamentally up for grabs

  Jonathan Lethem

  Life Is

  4 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

• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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

  Jonathan Lethem

  Confused, Boundaries, Genre

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• The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Spiritual, Memories, Book

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• Novelists get to direct the perfect films. We get to cast every part. We dress the set exactly as we wish.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Perfect, Wish, Novelists

  Interview with Paul Auster, www.believermag.com. February 2005.

  4 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

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

  Jonathan Lethem

  Percentages

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

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• 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

  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

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• 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

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• Discomfort is very much part of my master plan.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Masters, Plans, Discomfort

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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.

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