278 Quotes by Jonathan Lethem

When people call something “original,” 9 out of 10 times they just don’t know the references or original sources involved.

The more film I watch, the more John Ford looks like a giant. His politics aren’t so good, and you have to learn to accept John Wayne as an actor, but he’s a poet in black and white.

You can’t be deep without a surface.

When Rolling Stone handed me this crazy assignment to be in the studio with James Brown, they had the misapprehension that I’d written for them already just because I claimed my character had.

I have no one to blame for the construction for myself, of course, but I’m always surprised and slightly sulky when I realize people are buying the whole thing.

So much of the effort that goes into writing prose for me is about making sentences that capture the music that I’m hearing in my head. It takes a lot of work, writing, writing, and rewriting to get the music exactly the way you want it to be.

Every artist has limits. No one can do everything. It’s impossible.

Behold the onset of my flinty tone. Along with so much else, a soft-tissue sarcoma can apparently drain the exultation from one’s prose.

Sometimes it’s better not to think in questions, but I can’t seem to get out of the habit.