Jonathan Lethem Quotes - Page 6

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• I don't really ask of myself a given word or page count or number of hours. To work every day, that's my only fetish. And there is a physical quality to it when a novel is thriving.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Numbers, Quality, Pages

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

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• 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

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• So much of the effort that goes into writing prose for me is about making sentences that capture the music that I'm hearing in my head. It takes a lot of work, writing, writing, and rewriting to get the music exactly the way you want it to be.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Effort, Want

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I tend to think of myself as a highly emotional writer. It's all coming out of the deepest feelings, out of dreams, out of the unconscious.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Dream, Emotional, Thinking

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• Making books has always felt very connected to my bookselling experience, that of wanting to draw people's attention to things that I liked, to shape things that I liked into new shapes.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Book, People, Attention

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

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• I prefer old books and find them more relevant. I dislike new books. It's like drinking wine that's not ready.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Book, Drinking, Wine

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• The computer is the way I'm making books, but I still think about the physical properties. I visualize the length of a book, the proportions of a book, in material terms.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Book, Thinking, Way

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I hate libraries for the way they put stickers on things. I don't approve of folding over pages, or of writing in books. God, forget scissors - that's beyond the pale.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Hate, Book, Writing

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

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• I don't write about anything I don't love even if that love sometimes gets all screwed up and tormented.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Writing, Sometimes, Screwed Up

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

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• I don't want to indulge myself in the luxury of writing beautiful paragraphs just for the sake of making beautiful writing. That doesn't interest me. I want everything to be essential.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Beautiful, Writing, Luxury

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I don't have a lot of paper in my immediate work environment, except when I'm doing things like checking the godforsaken proofs.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Paper, Environment, Proof

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

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• What I'm constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader will forget that the medium of communication is language.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Communication, Writing, Language

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• I've been an advocate against the view of the writer as a partitioned genius hanging in conceptual space, or up on a mountain, a bringer of Promethean fire, some unique transmission that comes out of nowhere. I prefer the opposite view - that writers come from somewhere. They read things, and they think about them, and they incorporate other people's thoughts.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Unique, Thinking, Fire

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

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• I'm a serial deconstructor of my own authority in certain areas.

  Jonathan Lethem

  Authority, Certain, Serials

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

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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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• 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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• I definitely care about how the concept of New York punk was constructed, and why it mattered. But I wasn't gonna do that. Partly because I'm not a great journalist...

  Jonathan Lethem

  New York, Care, Punk

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

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