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I just noticed recently that in one book after another I seem to find an excuse to find some character who, to put it idiotically simply, is allowed to talk crazy.

Jonathan Lethem

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Jonathan Lethem
Age: 60
Born: 1964
Born: February 19
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
New York City
New York
Jonathan Allen Lethem
Harry Conklin
Seems
Noticed
Character
Allowed
Find
Excuse
Book
Seem
Simply
Crazy
Talk
Idiotically
Another
Recently

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By removing the stories from the morass of things that surround us, I'm hoping to achieve some kind of purer approach to emotional life.
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You can't be deep without a surface
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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.
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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.
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My heart and the elevator, a plummet inside a plummet.
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I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.
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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.
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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.
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There's something about the rhythms of language that correspond to the rhythms of our own bodies.
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I believe that written stories will continue to survive because they answer an essential human need. I think movies might disappear before the novel disappears, because the novel is really one of the only places in the world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy.
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I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram.
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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.
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I'm learning to hate the sound of my own voice.
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I'm a serial deconstructor of my own authority in certain areas.
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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.
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