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"I learned to write fiction the way I learned to read fiction - by skipping the parts that bored me."
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Exlpore more Fiction quotes
"What I'd show you is much more bizarre than anything we have looked at so far, and I warn you in advance that the first impulse will be to laugh. That's all right. Laugh if you must. Just don't take your eye off what you see, for even in your imagination, here is a creature who can do you damage."
"Novelists are basically inviting their readers to play a game of pretend. That's what fiction is: a game of pretend."
"Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn't happen, but other planets."
"Imminent GM bankruptcy was always fiction, created by Wall Street and the media."
"Where do you think they've gone?' he said.'Where what?' said Lady Ramkin, temporarily halted.'The dragons. You know. Errol and his wi - female.''Oh, somewhere isolated and rocky, I should imagine,' said Lady Ramkin. 'Favourite country for dragons.''But it - she's a magical animal,' said Vimes. 'What'll happen when the magic goes away?'Lady Ramkin gave him a shy smile.'Most people seem to manage,' she said.She reached across the table and touched his hand."
"A man walked across the moors from Razorback to Lancre town without seeing a single marshlight, head-less dog, strolling tree, ghostly coach or comet, and had to be taken in by a tavern and given a drink to unsteady his nerves."
"In camp was found a book, the first of the kind I had ever seen, in which I was made a great hero, slaying Indians by the hundreds."
"Flakes of snow swirled and danced across the porch. The Overlook faced it as it had for nearly three-quarters of a century, its darkened windows now bearded with snow, indifferent to the fact it was now cut off from the world. Inside its shell the three of them went about their early evening routine, like microbes trapped in the intestine of a monster."
"Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity."
Explore more quotes by Jonathan Lethem
"I had always wanted to be a writer who confused genre boundaries and who was read in multiple contexts."
"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."
"I got into underground comics fairly early on and kind of wandered away from the superhero stuff, but I was an art student and I was drawing a lot as a kid."
"When the civil rights battle was won, all the Jews and hippies and artists were middle class white people and all the blacks were still poor. Materially, not much changed."
"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."
"What's lucky about my career in general is that I stumbled into what every writer most wants. Not repeating myself and doing strange things has become my trademark."
"I never take any notes or draw charts or make elaborate diagrams, but I hold an image of the shape of a book in my head and work from that mental hologram."
"I just noticed recently that in one book after another I seem to find an excuse to find some character who, to put it idiotically simply, is allowed to talk crazy."
"Fantastic writing in English is kind of disreputable, but fantastic writing in translation is the summit."
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