Jonathan Lethem Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• To the resentment that hides inside love, to the loneliness that hides among companions.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Loneliness, Resentment, Companion

  Jonathan Lethem (2014). “You Don't Love Me Yet”, p.116, Faber & Faber

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• There were days when no kid came out of his house without looking around. The week after Halloween had a quality both hungover and ominous, the light pitched, the sky smashed against the rooftops.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Halloween, Kids, Light

  Jonathan Lethem (2004). “The Fortress of Solitude”, p.46, Vintage

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• Tourette's is just one big lifetime of tag, really. The world (or my brain---same thing) appoints me it, again and again. So I tag back. Can it do otherwise? If you've ever been it you know the answer.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Brain, Answers, World

  Jonathan Lethem (2011). “Motherless Brooklyn: A Novel”, p.15, Vintage

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• I have a horror of silence while I'm writing. It's like the universe is howling at me if I don't have it.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Silence, Horror

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

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• My heart, to put it more simply, got nostalgic for the present. Always a bad sign.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Heart, My Heart, Nostalgic

  Jonathan Lethem (2011). “As She Climbed Across the Table: A Novel”, p.5, Vintage

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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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• 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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• Being blocked, being uncertain, sitting there not knowing, waiting, abiding with it: this is the work. If you don't have the tolerance for that you're in great trouble. If you want to call it a writer's block... that doesn't seem a very useful name for that kind of abiding that I think is the essence of the work.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Block, Thinking, Essence

  Big Think Interview with Max Miller, bigthink.com. September 25, 2010.

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• Waves, sky, trees, Essrog - I was off the page now, away from the grammar of skyscrapers and pavement.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Sky, Tree, Pages

  Jonathan Lethem (2014). “Motherless Brooklyn”, p.208, Faber & Faber

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• I got into underground comics fairly early on and kind of wandered away from the superhero stuff, but I was an art student and I was drawing a lot as a kid.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Art, Kids, Drawing

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• Anyone could see it all coming and no one could possibly stop it and that was the beautiful thing. Friday night was open wide and writ in stone

  Jonathan Lethem

  Beautiful, Friday, Night

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

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• I have no one to blame for the construction for myself, of course, but I'm always surprised and slightly sulky when I realizeВ people are buying the whole thing.

  Jonathan Lethem

  People, Sulky, Buying

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

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• In the sea of words, the in print is foam, surf bubbles riding the top. And it's a dark sea, and deep, where divers need lights on their helmets and would perish at the lower depths.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Dark, Light, Sea

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• I've just finished reading Reality Hunger and I'm lit up by it-astonished, intoxicated, ecstatic, overwhelmed. . . . It really is an urgent book: a piece of art-making itself, a sublime, exciting, outrageous, visionary volume.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Art, Book, Reading

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• I'd excluded New York from my writing, and then I came back and I fell in love with it all over again... The energy comes from an absence, that yearning for New York when you are not there.

  Jonathan Lethem

  New York, Writing, Energy

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

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• When Rolling Stone handed me this crazy assignment to be in the studio with James Brown, they had the misapprehension that I'd written for them already just because I claimed my character had.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Crazy, Character, Rolling

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

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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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• You discovered yourself and what really mattered only after you passed through the lens of the fairy tale, imposed on every human female and male alike, that someone existed out in the forest of the world for you to love and marry.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Males, Female, Lenses

  Jonathan Lethem (2014). “Dissident Gardens”, p.156, Random House

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• Teenage life - possibly adult life too is all about what you want and can’t have. And then about what you receive and misuse.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Teenage, Adults, Want

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• I had an all-Fear of Music iPod, just versions of the 11 songs from the record. No other songs allowed.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Song, Ipods, Records

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

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• 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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• Consensual reality is both fragile and elastic, and it heals like the skin of a bubble.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Reality, Skins, Heal

  Jonathan Lethem (2011). “Motherless Brooklyn: A Novel”, p.58, Vintage

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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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• 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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• The kernel, the soul - let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances - is plagiarism.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Soul, Substance, Utterance

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