Quote

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

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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
Love
Discovered
Alike
World
Males
Existed
Female
Marry
Mattered
Someone
Fairy
Lens
Human
Forests
Lenses
Humans
Passed
Imposed
Every
Male
Tale
Really
Tales
Forest

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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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When people call something original, 9 out of 10 times they just don't know the references or original sources involved.
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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.
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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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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.
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It wasn't for children, seventh grade. You could read the stress of even entering the building in the postures of the teachers, the security guards. Nobody could relax in such a racial and hormonal disaster area.
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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.
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What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?
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Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.
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Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.
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...Don't rupture another's illusion unless you're positive the alternative you offer is more worthwhile than that from which you're wrenching them. Interrogate your solipsism: Does it offer any better a home than the delusions you're reaching to shatter?
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Every book is a kind of experiment in doing something that feels impossible.
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I'm not a sociologist, and the novel has often concerned itself with sociology. It's one of the generating forces that's made fiction interesting to people. But that's not my concern. I'm interested in psychology. And also certain philosophical questions about the world.
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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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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'm a firm believer that there are no rules in art. Every trajectory is different.
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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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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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With a book you can read the same paragraph four times. You can go back to page 21 when you're on page 300. You can't do that with film. It just charges ahead.
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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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