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" I'd excluded New York from my writing, and then I came back and I fell in love with it all over again. The energy comes from an absence, that yearning for New York when you are not there. "
Jonathan Lethem
Writing
You
Energy
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" Discomfort is very much part of my master plan. "
Jonathan Lethem
Discomfort
Plan
Part
" Comics? Honestly, that's more a matter of nostalgia for me. I think most of that energy has gone to my love of literature and my love of film. "
Jonathan Lethem
Me
Energy
Film
" My fiction has been influenced by the visual arts, though not in obvious ways, it seems to me. I don't offer tremendous amounts of visual information in my work. "
Jonathan Lethem
Me
Information
Arts
" I try not to become too regular an addict of any one subculture. "
Jonathan Lethem
Try
Too
Subculture
" Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit. "
Jonathan Lethem
Writing
Summit
Translation
" I don't paint anymore. I haven't since I abandoned it at 19, in order to begin writing seriously. "
Jonathan Lethem
Paint
Abandoned
Seriously
" 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. "
Jonathan Lethem
Level
Spiritual
Kind
" The arts and a belief in the values of the civil rights movement, in the overwhelming virtue of diversity, these were our religion. My parents worshipped those ideals. "
Jonathan Lethem
Religion
Parents
Values
" It was only as I wrote about it that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then. "
Jonathan Lethem
Paths
Access
Feelings
" 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
Image
Work
Book
" I grew up with an artist father, and my parents' friends were also mainly artists or writers, so he connects what I do with his example. "
Jonathan Lethem
Artist
Up
He
" I got into underground comics fairly early on and kind of wandered away from the superhero stuff, but I was an art student and I was drawing a lot as a kid. "
Jonathan Lethem
Drawing
Early
Student
" It's now expected of me that I will defy expectation, so I really generally seem to be free to write what I want. "
Jonathan Lethem
Expectation
Free
Me
" 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. "
Jonathan Lethem
Black
Politics
Good
" Nerds are just deep, and neurotic, fans. Needy fans. We're all nerds, on one subject or another. "
Jonathan Lethem
Deep
Subject
Just
" I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world. "
Jonathan Lethem
Part
I Can
Human
" 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
Character
Crazy
Just
" It was good while it was good. "
Jonathan Lethem
Good
While
" 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. "
Jonathan Lethem
Simple
Beginning
Book
" I'd have been a filmmaker or a cartoonist or something else which extended from the visual arts into the making of narratives if I hadn't been able to shift into fiction. "
Jonathan Lethem
Something
Arts
Been
" I've had the odd good luck of starting slowly and building gradually, something few writers are allowed anymore. As a result I've seen each of my books called the breakthrough. And each was, in its way. "
Jonathan Lethem
Good
Result
Luck
" When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed. "
Jonathan Lethem
Battle
People
Rights
" I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts. "
Jonathan Lethem
Always
Writer
Confused
" I've never related to the work geek at all-it sounds much more horrible than nerd. Like a freak biting a chicken's head off in a sideshow. "
Jonathan Lethem
More
Head
Chicken
" I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull. "
Jonathan Lethem
Skull
Bear
Ringing
" I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me. "
Jonathan Lethem
Fiction
Me
Way
" In my third novel there is an actual black hole that swallows everything you love. "
Jonathan Lethem
Everything
Hole
Love
" 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
Buildings
Me
Memory
" 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. "
Jonathan Lethem
Doing
Strange
Myself