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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

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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
Forget
Sticker
Hate
Approve
Book
Libraries
Writing
Pale
Way
Library
Things
Pages
Stickers
Beyond
Folding
Books
Scissors

More quotes by Jonathan Lethem

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All paths lead nowhere choose one with heart...
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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.
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My inner chemistry had been hijacked by a mad scientist, who poured the fizzy, volatile contents of my heart from a test tube marked SOBER REALITY into another labeled SUNNY DELUSION, and back again, faster and faster, until the floor of my life was slick with spillage.
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I had an all-Fear of Music iPod, just versions of the 11 songs from the record. No other songs allowed.
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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'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.
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Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about.
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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.
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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.
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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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I'm a serial deconstructor of my own authority in certain areas.
Jonathan Lethem
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You can't be deep without a surface
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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.
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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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I'm a firm believer that there are no rules in art. Every trajectory is different.
Jonathan Lethem
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I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture.
Jonathan Lethem
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Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.
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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.
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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
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Artists freeze themselves into these weird postures that are meant to be impressive and involving, then they fling them out into the world like Polaroids, and then they move on. And I'm stuck in this intense relationship to the Polaroid.
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