Writing Quotes by Jonathan Lethem

Yes! I'm the slowest comic-book writer on Earth.

— Jonathan Lethem

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

— Jonathan Lethem

I hate feeling too complacent when I write. I like to be solving new problems.

— Jonathan Lethem

Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.

— Jonathan Lethem

I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts.

— Jonathan Lethem

I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me.

— Jonathan Lethem

I want to write books that can be read a hundred years from now, and readers wouldn't be bogged down by irrelevant…

— Jonathan Lethem

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

— Jonathan Lethem

What's lucky about my career in general is that I stumbled into what every writer most wants. Not repeating myself and doing…

— Jonathan Lethem

The world's large enough and interesting enough to take a different approach each time you sit down to write about it.

— Jonathan Lethem

I'd excluded New York from my writing, and then I came back and I fell in love with it all over again.…

— Jonathan Lethem

“We knew it was holy. Every sentence we cherished was sturdy and Biblical in its form, carved somehow by hand-dragged implement or…

— Jonathan Lethem

I don't know why the world has changed so much that writers are now expected to appear in public and talk about…

— Jonathan Lethem

I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've…

— Jonathan Lethem

Poetry is supposed to be musical. But people don't understand prose. They're so used to reading journalism - clunky, functional sentences that…

— Jonathan Lethem

As much as I revere great writing, and am still humbled by it, literary activities are no longer esoteric to me. When…

— Jonathan Lethem

My writing life is pretty simple - I try to work every day, almost always in the mornings - and I can…

— Jonathan Lethem

The level at which my OCD enters my writing process isn't that I slap the keyboard - it's more along the lines…

— Jonathan Lethem

So much of the effort that goes into writing prose for me is about making sentences that capture the music that I'm…

— Jonathan Lethem

I try to write every day. I don't beat myself up about word counts, or how many hours are ticking by on…

— Jonathan Lethem

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

I've always felt that the writing I responded to most - the novels and stories that compelled me, that felt like they…

— Jonathan Lethem

“We writers aren't sculpting in DNA, or even clay or mud, but words, sentences, paragraphs, syntax, voice; materials issued by tongue or…

— Jonathan Lethem

“But we were chumps and we knew it. As makers of sentences we were practically fetal, beneath notice, unlaunched, fooling around in…

— Jonathan Lethem

“This was the time when all we could talk about was sentences, sentences—nothing else stirred us. Whatever happened in those days, whatever…

— Jonathan Lethem

Writing is physical for me. I always have the sense that the words are coming out of my body, not just my…

— Jonathan Lethem

I don't want to indulge myself in the luxury of writing beautiful paragraphs just for the sake of making beautiful writing. That…

— Jonathan Lethem

Writing is a necessity and often a pleasure, but at the same time, it can be a great burden and a terrible…

— Jonathan Lethem

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

— Jonathan Lethem

I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I…

— Jonathan Lethem

I tend to think of myself as a highly emotional writer. It's all coming out of the deepest feelings, out of dreams,…

— 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…

— Jonathan Lethem

I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously.

— Jonathan Lethem

When I write lyrics, I really do go into an automatic folk appropriation mode... I see the vernacular register of 20th century…

— Jonathan Lethem

I have a horror of silence while I'm writing. It's like the universe is howling at me if I don't have it.

— Jonathan Lethem

I hate libraries for the way they put stickers on things. I don't approve of folding over pages, or of writing in…

— Jonathan Lethem

“Picture us, five floating nudists in oxygen masks, ragged with fatigue and degrees of schock, squeezing the last beads of antifreeze from…

— Jonathan Lethem

I listen to music all the time. I write while listening to music. And I tell myself that the music nourishes the…

— Jonathan Lethem

What I'm constantly striving for in my prose is clarity. So that, ideally, the writing will become so transparent that the reader…

— Jonathan Lethem

Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit.

— Jonathan Lethem