Quote

Yet I'm making a book and I'm going to care immensely about what words get bound in the pages, and I want the object to look good. I won't believe in it and it won't be real to me until there's a finished book I can hold.

Jonathan Lethem

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Making
Bound
Good
Care
Bounds
Look
Object
Book
Finished
Looks
Pages
Objects
Real
Hold
Going
Words
Immensely
Believe

More quotes by Jonathan Lethem

Image
Some people have things written all over their faces the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.
Jonathan Lethem
Image
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.
Jonathan Lethem
Image
I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.
Jonathan Lethem
Image
How often had that hydrant even been opened? Did you jet water through a car window, what, twice at best? Summer burned just a few afternoons long, in the end. As for flying, Dose never even glanced at the sky. Flying was a summer within a summer, a whim. So why think of it at all?
Jonathan Lethem
Image
Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.
Jonathan Lethem
Image
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
Image
What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?
Jonathan Lethem
Image
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
Image
Yes! I'm the slowest comic-book writer on Earth.
Jonathan Lethem
Image
My heart and the elevator, a plummet inside a plummet.
Jonathan Lethem
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Writing is physical for me. I always have the sense that the words are coming out of my body, not just my mind.
Jonathan Lethem
Image
Every book is a kind of experiment in doing something that feels impossible.
Jonathan Lethem
Image
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
Image
You can't be deep without a surface
Jonathan Lethem
Image
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
Image
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