American - Writer | February 19, 1964 -
I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.
Jonathan Lethem
WorkWorldI CanHumanPretendPart
I can't bear the silent ringing in my skull.
SilentBearSkullRinging
Discomfort is very much part of my master plan.
PlanDiscomfortMasterMuchPart
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.
WorkMeInformationFictionArts
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.
WalkPastMemoryMeBuildingsStill
It was only as I wrote about it that I began to find paths of access to feelings that were intolerable to me then.
MePathsFindFeelingsOnlyAccess
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.
ReligionDiversityParentsValues
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.
PeopleBattleWhiteClassPoor
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.
LoveNew YorkWritingEnergyYou
In my third novel there is an actual black hole that swallows everything you love.
LoveBlackYouEverythingHole
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.
FatherParentsFriendsArtistUpHe
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.
TimeMyselfSimpleBeginningBook
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