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I want to write books that can be read a hundred years from now, and readers wouldn't be bogged down by irrelevant details.
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
Wouldn
Books
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Bogged
Write
Irrelevant
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Readers
Writing
Details
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Hundred
More quotes by Jonathan Lethem
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.
Jonathan Lethem
I listen to music all the time. I write while listening to music. And I tell myself that the music nourishes the art forms that I do master and domesticate, and have authority over.
Jonathan Lethem
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
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
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.
Jonathan Lethem
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
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
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.
Jonathan Lethem
When people call something original, 9 out of 10 times they just don't know the references or original sources involved.
Jonathan Lethem
Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.
Jonathan Lethem
Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.
Jonathan Lethem
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.
Jonathan Lethem
I'm learning to hate the sound of my own voice.
Jonathan Lethem
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
One of the things that novels have tended not to concentrate on over the centuries is the fact that people read books.
Jonathan Lethem
Teenage life - possibly adult life too is all about what you want and can’t have. And then about what you receive and misuse.
Jonathan Lethem
What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?
Jonathan Lethem
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
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.
Jonathan Lethem
I'm a serial deconstructor of my own authority in certain areas.
Jonathan Lethem