Quote

However appalling to consider, however tedious to enact, every novel requires furniture, whether it is to be named or unnamed, for the characters will be unable to remain in standing position for the duration of the story.

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
Novel
Named
Position
Unable
Story
Requires
Unnamed
Whether
Remain
Enact
Stories
Consider
Appalling
Character
Characters
Duration
Every
However
Tedious
Standing
Furniture

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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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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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One of the things that novels have tended not to concentrate on over the centuries is the fact that people read books.
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You can't be deep without a surface
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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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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.
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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...
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It was often this way, life consisted of a series of false beginnings, bluff declarations of arrival to destinations not even glimpsed.
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The past is still visible. The buildings haven't changed, the layout of the streets hasn't changed. So memory is very available to me as I walk around.
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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.
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I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.
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Every book is a kind of experiment in doing something that feels impossible.
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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 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.
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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.
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I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.
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My inner chemistry had been hijacked by a mad scientist, who poured the fizzy, volatile contents of my heart from a test tube marked SOBER REALITY into another labeled SUNNY DELUSION, and back again, faster and faster, until the floor of my life was slick with spillage.
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Apparently Brooklyn needn't always push itself to be something else, something conscious and anxious, something pointed toward Manhattan.... Brooklyn might sometimes also be pleased, as here on Flatbush, to be its grubby, enduring self.
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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.
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Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.
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