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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.

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
Emotional
Achieve
Stories
Morass
Kind
Purer
Things
Removing
Life
Hoping
Surround
Approach

More quotes by Jonathan Lethem

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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.
Jonathan Lethem
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All paths lead nowhere choose one with heart...
Jonathan Lethem
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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.
Jonathan Lethem
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Every book is a kind of experiment in doing something that feels impossible.
Jonathan Lethem
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You can't be deep without a surface
Jonathan Lethem
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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?
Jonathan Lethem
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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.
Jonathan Lethem
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I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.
Jonathan Lethem
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The kernel, the soul - let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances - is plagiarism.
Jonathan Lethem
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There's never any percentage in being ahead of your time.
Jonathan Lethem
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I’ve always been uninterested in boundaries or quarantines between tastes and types, between mediums and genres.
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.
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 have no one to blame for the construction for myself, of course, but I'm always surprised and slightly sulky when I realizeВ people are buying the whole thing.
Jonathan Lethem
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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
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I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.
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 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.
Jonathan Lethem
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Making books has always felt very connected to my bookselling experience, that of wanting to draw people's attention to things that I liked, to shape things that I liked into new shapes.
Jonathan Lethem
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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