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" What qualified me to write about Israel was that I wanted to; it took no time to convince myself. The only reservation I had was about eaven: I wanted to write about the Jewish heaven but did not feel qualified because I did not and do not believe in 'it,' though I should. "

Joshua Cohen

Feel

Myself

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" The M.F.A. is a degree in servitude. It is a way to keep writing safe - to keep reading safe from writing. "

" I have a credit card and a phone. I answer emails; I answer questions on chat in the middle of the day. Then, late at night, I write against other people who do just that. "

" I first read Dostoyevsky when I was 14 years old and was entranced. Dostoyevsky truly is a writer for 14-year-olds, and I mean that in the most approving way - approving of his energy, and rage, his endless pessimism, and endless innocence. "

" Most literature everywhere and of every time is bad. "

" Books were in my family - books were my family. "

" The birth of the search engine, it's nothing new: it's essentially embedded in our literature; it's how ideas relate, how the mind makes connections. I mean, connections are made online through links, and within an algorithm, they're made through degrees of relevancy between different terms. "

Joshua Cohen

Ideas

Mind

" You know you're a fool when what you're doing makes even the post office seem efficient. "

" Without computers, in the 17th century, we could classify the entire animal kingdom... there was this idea of the speciation, right? And now, all a search engine is is essentially the mathematical speciation of ideas - and these things really derive from the way that language is used and the way words relate. "

Joshua Cohen

Ideas

Words

" In mid-20th-century America, it could be argued that the novelist still had the most claim of anyone to omniscience. Whatever he/she couldn't prove, he/she could gesture at. "

" I think if German literature could survive the '40s and Russian literature could survive Sovietism, American literature can survive Google. "

" I've always been discreet - more than discreet. When a friend calls, and I'm doing something innocuous like cooking dinner, I tell them I'm reading or running out to the movies. It's the surveillance I can't stand. "

" Metaphors, similes, puns - all manner of metonymy - I'm interested in language that cannot be parsed by a machine - language that can only be understood through acculturation. "

" I don't think any book of mine will ever come as close to pure fantasy as 'A Heaven of Others.' I'll never again set a book in a world or after-world in which it's impossible to buy a cup of coffee or take an undisturbed afternoon nap. "

" The problem is Jewish-American fiction that always ends with assimilation back into the community. "

" The big publishers want someone they can send on the Jewish book circuit, somebody the old ladies can see marrying their granddaughters. "

" The Muslim heaven features prominently in the Quran, Arabic poetries and Hadith. The Jewish heaven, though, is still a mystery; it's mystic. "

" Most novelists are narcissistic egomaniacs who would probably fit somewhere on the CEO spectrum. "

" The Internet makes the writer work harder - I have to say things here I've never said before, or else be caught out in repeating myself. "

" Writing is a conviction before it is a craft. "

" The Internet is a tool, a technology, and we like to say that it has all of these properties, but really, it's just a place where our writing is. "

" All of business and all of politics is essentially fiction to those who live them. I have more experience with fiction than most senators because I do it all day, so their world didn't seem that foreign to me. "

Joshua Cohen

Politics

Live

" English, unlike Hebrew, is read from left to right - as are clocks. The concepts of clockwise and counterclockwise are universal, irrespective of alphabet. "

" There are so many classic Big Brother warning books: the Internet is a horrible, controlling thing, as if it has a consciousness or political agenda. "

" You write a novel by inventing a world and inventing the rules that govern that world. Then you break the rules when you want to. "