20 Jonathan Dee Quotes for You to Enjoy

Jonathan Dee

American Novelist

Born: 1962

Book First Me People Time You

Related authors: Elie Wiesel Ernest Hemingway H. P. Lovecraft James Baldwin John Updike Leo Rosten Nathaniel Hawthorne Richard Bach

Those who know New York City primarily through tourism or mass culture may think of us natives as possessing certain shared characteristics, not all of them flattering. But the true, volatile charisma of New York lies in how balkanised it is. Jonathan Dee

Culture Think Those Possessing Characteristics Charisma City Lies Through Volatile Shared Tourism Primarily True Mass New Know How York May New York New York City Natives Flattering Them Us Certain Who

Novels are a kind of experiment in selfhood, for the reader as well as for the author. Jonathan Dee

Experiment Kind Well Reader Author Novels

It's not really an original idea, but there's something that goes along with power and celebrity that starts to make you feel like you're impervious to certain forces that the rest of us have to live with. Jonathan Dee

When I read a book I liked, I would get a pen and one of my father's legal pads and rewrite it from memory as if I had thought of it myself. It was a clear sign that I wanted to be involved in writing, even if it was just pretend at that point. Jonathan Dee

You never want to be in a position where your reader feels like you're passing judgment on your own characters. Any novel where you feel like the author is talking to the reader over the characters' heads is in a bad place. Jonathan Dee

I'm not interested in current events per se, but I am interested in how certain aspects of social or public life that might seem ultra-contemporary actually take their place in a long American continuum. Jonathan Dee

If you look at the practice of 'crisis management,' and maybe squint at it a little, you can make out in the corners of your vision the ghosts or the vestiges of a much older, but still thoroughly American, form of public life, one centered not on public opinion but on religion. Jonathan Dee

Life Religion You Management Vision Practice Older Corners Thoroughly Ghosts Crisis Out Look Make Opinion Still American Maybe Form Centered Public Little Much Public Life Your Public Opinion

In order to describe a particular subculture, you might want to portray people who are typical or representative of that subculture; but to dramatize it, to make it an interesting setting for a story, you want to bring someone anomalous into that setting, to see how she conforms to it, and it to her. Jonathan Dee

Writers like to feel sorry for themselves, which is easy to do in private, but when called on to feel sorry for ourselves in social situations, we will often do so by sharing terrible book tour stories. Jonathan Dee

Book Will Sorry Book Tour Ourselves Easy Writers Tour Sharing Feel Like Terrible Private Often Situations Stories Which Social Themselves

Here is what I am not going to do: I am not going to go to a restaurant, take pictures of my food, download them, and call that a blog. That is beyond the pale. The Internet is such a bazaar of self-indulgences that I don't know why that particular one should bug me so much. But it really does. Jonathan Dee

Food Me Internet Restaurant Take Particular Pictures Beyond Know Bug Call Does Am Go Blog Going Them Much Really Should Download Why Pale Here

Children go from being a kind of cultural protectorate to the Junior Auxiliary of the tube-watching nation at large, and programs are designed for them on the same principle as they're designed for grown-ups: as a way to sell eyeballs to advertisers. Jonathan Dee

Nation Programs Way Kind Eyeballs Advertiser Principle Go Cultural Sell Junior Same Being Children Them Large Grown-Ups Designed

Tween programming is so retro that the shows even have theme songs, something the quest for more commercial time drove out of prime-time television years ago. Jonathan Dee

Time Programming Television Out Something More Songs Drove Retro Years Years Ago Quest Commercial Theme Even Shows

I seem to have a talent for writing endings that seem just right to me but that frustrate other people. Jonathan Dee

Me People Writing Other Seem Talent Endings Just Frustrate Right

There's no path to being a writer that's applicable to everyone. Some young writers have the fortitude to work in a vacuum. For me, it was important to have some sense that my failures weren't unique. Jonathan Dee

Work Me Path Important Young Sense Everyone Some Writer Writers Failures Were Being Young Writers Fortitude Unique Applicable Vacuum

I wrote my first novel in the same conditions as most first novelists - I had a full-time job, I shared an apartment, I had no time - and so I became a compulsive outliner of everything. Ever since then, my process has consisted of trying to forcibly rid myself of that compulsion. Jonathan Dee

Time Myself Job First Everything Compulsion Compulsive No Time Had Shared Since Most Wrote Became Conditions Trying Same Process Apartment Then Rid Full-Time Full-Time Job Novel Novelists Ever

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