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I definitely care about how the concept of New York punk was constructed, and why it mattered. But I wasn't gonna do that. Partly because I'm not a great journalist...

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
Definitely
Gonna
Mattered
York
Constructed
Wasn
Partly
Care
Punk
Great
Journalist
Concept
Concepts

More quotes by Jonathan Lethem

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I don't have a lot of paper in my immediate work environment, except when I'm doing things like checking the godforsaken proofs.
Jonathan Lethem
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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.
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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.
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The computer is the way I'm making books, but I still think about the physical properties. I visualize the length of a book, the proportions of a book, in material terms.
Jonathan Lethem
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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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One of the things that novels have tended not to concentrate on over the centuries is the fact that people read books.
Jonathan Lethem
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Yes! I'm the slowest comic-book writer on Earth.
Jonathan Lethem
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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.
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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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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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I just noticed recently that in one book after another I seem to find an excuse to find some character who, to put it idiotically simply, is allowed to talk crazy.
Jonathan Lethem
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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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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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The book is openly a kind of spiritual autobiography, but the trick is that on any other level it's a kind of insane collage of fragments of memory.
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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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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.
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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Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.
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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I’ve always been uninterested in boundaries or quarantines between tastes and types, between mediums and genres.
Jonathan Lethem