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Writing is a necessity and often a pleasure, but at the same time, it can be a great burden and a terrible struggle.

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
Struggle
Pleasure
Often
Great
Writing
Time
Necessity
Burden
Terrible

More quotes by Jonathan Lethem

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I'm a firm believer that there are no rules in art. Every trajectory is different.
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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.
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I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.
Jonathan Lethem
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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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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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All paths lead nowhere choose one with heart...
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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.
Jonathan Lethem
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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.
Jonathan Lethem
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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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Some people have things written all over their faces the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.
Jonathan Lethem
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My heart and the elevator, a plummet inside a plummet.
Jonathan Lethem
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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.
Jonathan Lethem
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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.
Jonathan Lethem
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I'm learning to hate the sound of my own voice.
Jonathan Lethem
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You can't be deep without a surface
Jonathan Lethem
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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.
Jonathan Lethem
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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
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There's never any percentage in being ahead of your time.
Jonathan Lethem
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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.
Jonathan Lethem
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I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.
Jonathan Lethem