Jonathan Lethem Quotes

I loved musicals because I felt like breaking out in song makes so much sense to me because it's the stakes of how you feel inside!

I find it hard to talk and say things, but I can always sing about them.

The thing running through me is the same thing that writes songs. It's the fighter about to get into the ring. It's like, I'm not here to entertain you; I'm here to get this out, whatever it is.

I had a slight touch of Tourette's, which means you talk to yourself and bark and cry out at night.

I was always getting caught for running my mouth. Which is why it was the best thing for me to get into acting so I could express myself.

Nas is an artist who writes from his heart.

I like to express myself fully with my body, with my language, with my voice, and through directing.

I don't just rap - I sing and I dance as well.

The urge to shout filthy words at the top of his voice was as strong as ever.

I love stepping onto the ice knowing I can create whatever I want or am feeling that day. It inspires me to be creative and artistic. It's a great therapeutic outlet to utilize both my heart and body at the same time.

One writes a poem when one is so taken up by an emotional concept that one is unable to remain silent.

You have no right to go before a public without an adequate technique, just because you feel. Anything feels - a leaf feels, a storm feels - what right have you to do that? You have to have speech, and it's a cultivated speech.

In my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of words to reach the highest cathedral ceilings and paint my thoughts. But when I open my mouth, everything collapses.

The only question that nobody ever asks is: What breaks your heart? I think that should be asked of all "artists."... So, what breaks your heart?

Are my words ever actually audible, or do they just echo in my head while people stare at me, waiting?

I cannot, nor I will not hold me still; My tongue, though not my heart, shall have his will.

As an artist you can use your own discomfort and neuroses and difficulties and at least transform them into something else. Without that you're just neurotic and uncomfortable.

As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor.

Feel, my children, feel; feel for the poor, the ignorant, the downtrodden; feel till the heart stops and the brain reels and you think you will go mad; then pour the soul out at the feet of the Lord, and then will come power, help and indomitable energy.

You are an artist. What work of art will you leave behind?

On radio, you're an artist. On TV, you're a servant.

When I left Iowa, I definitely never wanted to stand in front of a group of academics again and see if they approved of me. I made up my mind to take my work to the actual reading public.

America hates the artist. It will not admit: the artist is my soul and I want to kill off my soul.

I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.