Jonathan Lethem Short Quotes

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Nature, or at least birds and women, abhorred the invisible man.

Jonathan Lethem
The key to mostly anything is pretending your first time *isn't*.

Jonathan Lethem
What exactly is postmodernism, except modernism without the anxiety?

Jonathan Lethem
You could grow up in the city where history was made and still miss it all.

Jonathan Lethem
Someday I would change my name to Shut Up and save everybody a lot of time.

Jonathan Lethem
My heart, to put it more simply, got nostalgic for the present. Always a bad sign.

Jonathan Lethem
Apologies aren't something you want to get in the habit of practicing in the mirror

Jonathan Lethem
Consensual reality is both fragile and elastic, and it heals like the skin of a bubble.

Jonathan Lethem
To the resentment that hides inside love, to the loneliness that hides among companions.

Jonathan Lethem
But the day I can't shrug off a twinge of self-pity, is the day I'm washed up for keeps.

Jonathan Lethem
I jotted the name down mentally on that tattered notepad I call a memory. The pen skipped.

Jonathan Lethem
I'd forgotten my identity as the world's most pathetic superhero, become a Californian instead.

Jonathan Lethem
Fifth grade was fourth grade with something wrong. Nothing changed outright. Instead it teetered.

Jonathan Lethem
Waves, sky, trees, Essrog - I was off the page now, away from the grammar of skyscrapers and pavement.

Jonathan Lethem
Some people have things written all over their faces; the big guy had a couple of words misspelled in crayon on his.

Jonathan Lethem
I guess they needed a maze in Japan, where everything's neat and tidy. In America everybody's already wandering around lost.

Jonathan Lethem
It was often this way, life consisted of a series of false beginnings, bluff declarations of arrival to destinations not even glimpsed.

Jonathan Lethem
I want what we all want," said Carl. "To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

Jonathan Lethem
Anyone could see it all coming and no one could possibly stop it and that was the beautiful thing. Friday night was open wide and writ in stone.

Jonathan Lethem
The kernel, the soul—let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances—is plagiarism,

Jonathan Lethem
As I get older I find that the friendships that are the most certain, ultimately, are the ones where you and the other person have made substantial amounts of money for one another.

Jonathan Lethem
In the sea of words, the in print is foam, surf bubbles riding the top. And it's a dark sea, and deep, where divers need lights on their helmets and would perish at the lower depths.

Jonathan Lethem
There were days when no kid came out of his house without looking around. The week after Halloween had a quality both hungover and ominous, the light pitched, the sky smashed against the rooftops.

Jonathan Lethem