Jonathan Lethem Quotes

Hip-Hop is being spoken through spirituality... Meaning that you'll be able to listen to it spiritually for yourself.

Seeing that picture, for me, was like Chartres Cathedral.

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

Making music is so spiritual. I'm not a spiritual person, but music is sacred to me.

I truly believe that music is the most powerful thing we have.

When we look at a painting, or hear a symphony, or read a book, and feel more Named, then, for us, that work is a work of Christian art. But to look at a work of art and then to make a judgment as to whether or not it is art, and whether or not it is Christian, is presumptuous. It is something we cannot know in any conclusive way. We can know only if it speaks within our own hearts, and leads us to living more deeply with Christ in God.

For me, creativity is essentially a spiritual experience, a conversation between my soul and me.

When I write my music I see all the rivers flowing... sensual, spiritual, religious, animal, intellectual.

There tend to be two different drives that lead young people toward music. One is that music provides an escape; it takes you away from the unhappiness or torture of where you are and makes you feel less alienated-you believe there is a place you fit in somewhere else. The other is a sort of transcendent, spiritual feeling in the purity of music.

I feel close to people like Jimi Hendrix because I connect with his music. Not the man but what he did.

Without music, life would be an error. The German imagines even God singing songs

The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity.

All music has political dimensions because it suggests a way of being.

For me dancing is not just moving your arms and legs but basically it's a very spiritual experience. It's part of me and a second nature to me. You can say it is in my blood.

I don't think I”m a very good actor. Everything is very tentative and at a certain point you click in and just feel the spirit move you. I can be possessed really well.

Shakespeare possesses the power of subordinating nature for the purposes of expression, beyond all poets. His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand, and uses it to embody any caprice of thought that is uppermost in his mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together, by subtle spiritual connection. We are made aware that magnitude of material things is relative, and all objects shrink and expand to serve the passion of the poet.

I'm not making light of prayers here, but of so-called school prayer, which bears as much resemblance to real spiritual experienceas that freeze-dried astronaut food bears to a nice standing rib roast. From what I remember of praying in school, it was almost an insult to God, a rote exercise in moving your mouth while daydreaming or checking out the cutest boy in the seventh grade that was a far, far cry from soul-searching.

Jazz was home. It created a hunger within me.

The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

When the intellectual part of guitar playing overrides the spiritual, you don't get to extreme heights.

Books make me feel safe. Books make me feel normal.

Music is the poor man's Parnassus.

Music is our myth of the inner life.

We have always created - music, literature, art, dance. The art around us - or lack of it - may be a measure of how we're doing as individuals and as a civilization, so maybe we should be worried.

Formats are just illusions, and it's about the relationship between the person that makes music and the person that listens to music. Every time there's a new format, the iron is hot, and you can mold it.