Jonathan Lethem Quotes

United States, Novelist
February 19, 1964

Jonathan Allen Lethem (LEE-thum, born February 19, 1964) is an American novelist, essayist, and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels.

Also known as Essayist, Writer

In my third novel there is an actual black hole that swallows everything you love.

Jonathan Lethem
- Black
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
- Luck

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

Jonathan Lethem
- Confused
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
- Parents
- Diversity
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
- Free
- Expectation
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
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
- Past