278 Quotes by Jonathan Lethem

You don’t have the slightest idea of what it means to write a scene and a character in the English language, with images and words chock full of received meaning.

I don't have a lot of paper in my immediate work environment, except when I'm doing things like checking the godforsaken proofs.

I plan less and less. It's a great benefit of writing lots, that you get good at holding long narratives in your head like a virtual space.

As a child growing up in pre-gentrification Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, I went everywhere by bicycle. My bike was in many ways the key to my neighborhood, which, at the time, was Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. This was in the 60s and 70s, before all the white people and restaurants. I really can't underscore boldly enough the fact that I grew up in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, before it was gentrified. You could get mugged!

I keep one simple rule that I only move in one direction - I write the book straight through from beginning to end. By following time's arrow, I keep myself sane.

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.

Writing is a private discipline, in a field of companions.

I’ve always been uninterested in boundaries or quarantines between tastes and types, between mediums and genres.

Consensual reality is both fragile and elastic, and it heals like the skin of a bubble.