Jonathan Lethem Quotes

How strange it began to seem that cars have bodies that never are supposed to touch, a disaster if they do.

Sometimes it’s better not to think in questions, but I can’t seem to get out of the habit.

There is nothing Tourettic about the New York City subways.

Vierte amor en las heridas.

Human lives exist to be experienced, or possibly endured, but not solved. They resemble any other novel more than they do mysteries. Westerns, even. It’s that lie the mystery tells that I detest.

Most artists are brought to their vocation when their own nascent gifts are awakened by the work of a master. That is to say, most artists are converted to art by art itself.

Let him get stoned, since everybody must.

A superhero spliced criminals from victims. In Gowanus things tended to be more mixed up.

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

Guilt wants to cover all the bases, be everywhere at once, reach into the past to tweak, neaten and repair. Guilt like Tourettic utterance flows uselessly, inelegantly from one helpless human to another, contemptuous of perimeters, doomed to be mistaken or refused on delivery.

Agli inizi della carriera ero così fesso da credere che il lavoro consistesse nell'individuare un colpevole tra la massa degli innocenti. In realtà si tratta casomai di trovare uno o due innocenti che meritano di essere salvati in mezzo alla massa dei cattivi.

You can't reclaim a thing that changes as you touch it.

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

You discovered yourself and what really mattered only after you passed through the lens of the fairy tale, imposed on every human female and male alike, that someone existed out in the forest of the world for you to love and marry.

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