Jonathan Lethem Quotes

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

Jonathan Lethem

• Writing
• English

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Quotes to Explore

• Sometimes things in life take a few years to digest, and they find their way into the work later on. Sometimes I'm writing about things from eight years ago-they just took a long time to distill and come out in the appropriate way.

  

  Beck
  • Life
  • Time
  • Work

• We're more interested in someone writing a really great answer that's going to be read by thousands or tens of thousands of people over the next few years as it stays on Quora and as it gets distributed on the Internet.

  

  Adam D'Angelo
  • People
  • Great
  • Writing

• I took English courses in college, but I don't have an English degree. I have a degree in economics.

  

  Patrick Carman
  • College
  • English
  • Economics

• The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.

  

  Natalie Goldberg
  • Writing
  • You
  • Quality

• I can sit and analyze everything and beat myself up and say you don't quite sing as good as you used to, you're writing better songs maybe than you used to, but to me it's just the journey.

  

  Vince Gill
  • Up
  • Good
  • Writing

• I have to write what I can write, and writing the text of a picture book is like walking a tightrope, if you ramble off... As my friend Julius Lester says, 'A picture book is the essence of an experience.'

  

  Patricia MacLachlan
  • Writing
  • Experience
  • Book

• There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement.

  

  Galen Rowell
  • Question
  • Photography
  • Environmental

• When I was writing 'The Windup Girl' and 'Ship Breaker,' I was writing those simultaneously, so I was an unpublished writer, not really having that full sense that these books would go out in the world, that they would be successful, that there would be an audience and that there would be fans of those stories.

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • World
  • Writing
  • Girl

• I actually run a non-profit where one of the main objectives is to branch out and get a new audience for the theater. Just because the writing is so good and nothing is more effective than seeing something live and happening right in front of your face, so I definitely want to continue to pursue that.

  

  Adam Driver
  • Good
  • Writing
  • Live

• I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born perpendicular, although many men are born upright.

  

  E. B. White
  • Men
  • Writing
  • Man

• As a storyteller, when you're writing a movie and when you're directing, you want to keep people entertained. That's the whole point, right? It has to be entertaining.

  

  Fede Alvarez
  • People
  • Writing
  • Movie

• Why should Scotland be stopped from suggesting to the English people that we join a new union under new terms? Let's not try to dominate one another. Let's be a collection, like being in the pub with a kitty. When we vote in Scotland, we vote one way, but the other country votes another way and we always end up with what they vote for.

  

  Eddi Reader
  • People
  • Up
  • Country

• Special-interest magazines are dangerous places for writers to start out in because the writing quickly falls into a routine and people are likely to find themselves artistically exhausted when they want to work on something of their own.

  

  Irwin Shaw
  • People
  • Work
  • Writing

• The limitless loving devotion to God, and the gift God makes of Himself to you, are the highest elevation of which the heart is capable; it is the highest degree of prayer. The souls that have reached this point are truly the heart of the Church.

  

  Edith Stein
  • God
  • Heart
  • Church

• There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.

  

  W. Somerset Maugham
  • Writing
  • Rules
  • Three

• I came to the U.S. in 1994 to learn English and go to business school, but I took only a few business courses at the State University of New York at Albany and didn't finish.

  

  Hamdi Ulukaya
  • School
  • Business
  • English

• When I'm writing books, something weird happens; and the result is the books contain a large amount of what you could call 'supernaturalism.' As a writer, I find I need that to explain the world I'm writing about.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • World
  • Writing
  • Weird

• I'm so damn boring. I like reading and writing and making coffee. And walking. Barry Jenkins likes long walks.

  

  Barry Jenkins
  • Long
  • Writing
  • Reading

• Writing Part of the Scenery has been a very different experience. I have been reminded of people and events, real and imaginary which have been part of my life. This book is a celebration of the land which means so much to me.

  

  Mary Wesley
  • People
  • Life
  • Different

• No-one can replace Richard Wright - he was my musical partner and my friend.

  

  David Gilmour Pink Floyd
  • Friend
  • Partner

• God is waiting to be gracious, and is willing to make us happy in religion, if we would not run away from him. We refuse to open the window shutters, and complain that it is dark.

  

  Adoniram Judson
  • God
  • Happy
  • Dark

• I do remember feeling, 'I don't ever want to feel impotent in terms of what I can control in a business in which you can have very little control.' And that motivated me to go to law school - that, and my parents saying, 'Go to law school before you do anything.'

  

  Marc Platt
  • School
  • Business
  • Remember

• It is one of history's ironies that Communism, advertised as a classless society, tended to breed a privileged class of feudal proportions.

  

  Henry Kissinger
  • Communism
  • Society
  • Feudal proportions

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

  

  Jonathan Lethem
  • Writing
  • English