I work on a laptop specifically so I can work in cafes and pretend I'm part of the human world.
Jonathan Lethem

It was good while it was good.
Jonathan Lethem

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

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.
Jonathan Lethem

I plan less and less. It's a great benefit of writing lots, that you get good at holding long narratives in your head like a virtual space.
Jonathan Lethem

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

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

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.
Jonathan Lethem