I'm a firm believer that there are no rules in art. Every trajectory is different. — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
Art is about eliminating almost everything in order to focus on the thing that you need to talk about. — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
Every artist has limits. No one can do everything. It's impossible. — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously. — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
“The Joker's henchmen break into the museum and empty the display cases; this occurs repeatedly, again and again: finally it can be… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
“Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
What's beautiful about art is that it circumscribes a space, a physical and mental space. If you try to put the entire… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
Once you fall into habits, I think, you're dead as an artist. You have to challenge yourself and never rest on your… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
Artists freeze themselves into these weird postures that are meant to be impressive and involving, then they fling them out into the… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
“...Paranoid art, unlike paranoid persons, also distrusts itself. And so, paranoid art is the ultimate opposite, the urgent opposite, of complacent art.” — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
I've discovered that like every writer, I'm helpless MYSELF - and that means I find myself unconsciously or semi-consciously repeating motifs and… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
The less you offer, the more readers are forced to bring the world to life with their own visual imaginings. I personally… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I'm a carnival barker, an auctioneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker in tongues,… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share Image
It was often this way, life consisted of a series of false beginnings, bluff declarations of arrival to destinations not even glimpsed. — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
I've been an advocate against the view of the writer as a partitioned genius hanging in conceptual space, or up on a mountain, a… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
“I suppose there was never a reason for tearing down a cabin or scrapping a stopped automobile, if you had all those acres.” — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
My heart, to put it more simply, got nostalgic for the present. Always a bad sign. — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
It's impossible to overstate how my relationship to music forms a preserve for the esoteric or even spiritual aspect of my relationship to cultural… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
“If. If Mingus Rude could be kept in this place, kept somehow in Dylan's pocket, in his stinging, smudgy hands, then summer wouldn't give… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts. — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
“Mingus Rude, Arthur Lomb, Gabriel Stern and Tim Vandertooth, even Aaron K. Doily: Dylan never met anyone who wasn't about to change immediately into… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
I try to write every day. I don't beat myself up about word counts, or how many hours are ticking by on the clock… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
“Enough of this. Does every conversation with you have to be the director's cut? Get out of the car.” — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
“The stumbling block will turn out to be the traditional one for students of consciousness: the flashlight is incapable of shining on itself, so… — Jonathan Lethem Copy Share
